


Sweet Dreams

by MissLiterary



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brotherly Love, Cabeswater Returns, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, M/M, No Call Down the Hawk Spoilers, Self-Sacrifice, Time running out, dream come true, first story!, swearing because Ronan Lynch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 77,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22310470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissLiterary/pseuds/MissLiterary
Summary: Ronan’s older brother falls for the paradise that Cabeswater promises, and if Ronan can’t convince him to leave before the Summer Solstice, he’ll be trapped there for eternity.
Relationships: Ashley/Declan Lynch, Declan Lynch & Matthew Lynch & Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 164
Kudos: 112





	1. The List

Rain pattered a rhythm atop the umbrella Blue and her mother Maura shared.

“Beatrice Mantz," her mother said. 

Blue scribbled down another name on her notebook.

“Luis Garcia,” she said next, eyes staring straight ahead, although there wasn’t much to see, not to Blue’s eyes.

Dense clouds hid any light the moon or stars could have given, and the clouds themselves were hidden by the dark of night. The only thing she could make out was the rain, which drenched the entire churchyard with a passion. It was a vast difference from her last St. Mark’s Eve. Last year, she had sat in the very same spot on the old churchyard’s stone wall, but this time, she didn’t see any ghosts.

Her mother did though. She saw lots of them. All the ghosts of the people in Henrietta who would die sometime this year now wandered the churchyard, seen only by Maura. Psychics like her saw those people on St. Mark's Eve, arriving here at the church as an omen to their last year to live.

“Excuse me, sir,” Maura said in that voice of hers, calm and relaxed, somehow, in a cold and wet graveyard. “What is your name?”

Blue waited.

Maura gave a small nod to the darkness in front of her. “Johnathon Miller.”

Blue jotted it down, holding the notepad close to shield it from any of the rain that swept beneath the umbrella. 

Another long pause broke up the last name she said from the next. They had been getting longer as the night and its rain wore on. The succession of ghosts making their way through the churchyard, each stopping to answer Maura's question, had begun trickling down to the last of them. Soon her mother would give the go-ahead, and they would pack up and head for the warmth of the car, the list safely tucked away in Blue's bag. 

“Hello, sir. What is your name?” Maura asked. She then nodded as the ghost told her.

Blue held her pencil at ready.

“Declan Lynch.”

* * *

 _Please, for the love of God, Ronan,_ Declan thought, almost in prayer. _Make it friendly._

From where he stood by his car, the outline of the woods, with its simple bushes and normal Virginian trees, appeared unassuming. Welcoming, even, but Declan knew better. A brief field of tall, yellow grass stood in the way between him, and whatever lied hidden in the forest on the other side. 

A few trees reached out into the field, where he had parked his car behind and out of sight of the road nearby. He had been standing there for some minutes now and no other vehicles have driven by yet, but Declan wasn't the kind to take needless chances. He still worried that something would happen to his car while he was away, but he didn't plan to stay any longer than he had to. 

With a deep breath, he made his way towards the forest.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary as he walked deeper inside. Birds flitted between branches, singing their tunes, and the trees above whispered among themselves in the breeze. The bushes and trees, and little clearings where flowers may bloom in the springtime made up the scenery of an average Virginian forest.

Declan wasn't fooled. Anything his brother was interested in could not be that simple.

The hairs began to stand on the back of his neck as he traveled deeper and deeper. Anything could happen, literally anything, and his little brother hadn’t given him the faintest clue to what. It _might_ be a normal forest, just with something peculiar hidden inside. A secret path, maybe, or a relic of strange power. Declan liked relics, and runes and codes...but that was wishful thinking. Knowing his brother though, it was probably something much sinister. 

This was the forest of Cabeswater. A place his brother had created, a place filled with things from his imagination, his dreams, and his nightmares.

Declan had never been. This place was special to his brother, and therefore assumably off-limits to him. He had no desire to visit, not when he knew it would infuriate his brother should he find out. In the end, Declan decided he could live with that. He had no qualms about missing out on a forest that could very well be the equivalent of a horror house. 

More than once he had thought of simply torching down the entire place. Destroying the forest destroyed any of the possible problems that it hid inside. He had been so tempted too, but he could never work up the nerve to do it. His brother loved the place, adored it. He suspected that the forest was a home away from home for his brother. It was his palace of dreams, the kingdom where he ruled, and when everything else in their lives was already falling apart...Declan couldn’t take that away from him.

Then one day, as though his prayers had been answered, Cabeswater had simply vanished. No trace of it had been left behind—Declan knew, he had checked—and for a blissful time he could remove one of the things he worried about from his list of things to worry about. During his day he could breathe a little easier.

For about a month, until this morning when he had nearly choked on his coffee at the sight of one of his machines detecting that damn forest again.

He was going to have to question his brother over it. That was not a confrontation he was looking forward to. As soon as his brother discovered where Declan had been he was going to be pissed. Maybe he could take the edge off by making it sound like he hadn't been to the forest in person. Either way, as soon as he brought Cabeswater into the conversation, all bets were off. As long as the day didn't end in a black eye...then Declan would consider it a win. 

Before he could face his brother, though, he had to face the forest.

Surprisingly, so far his search had been...pleasant. He felt calm, and continually calmer, the further he ventured, and he had to wonder if that was normal. He jumped when he spotted movement to his right, only to find that he had startled a little frog into dashing back to its creek. He watched it leap into the water, in turn causing a small school of fish to disperse. The fish, with little red dots on their heads, spread out and vanished beneath the water’s surface.

_Visitor…_

Declan became very still.

_Visitor…_

Someone was in this forest with him.

Panic shot up his spine when he realized he couldn’t pinpoint the direction of the sound. He spun in a circle, and froze again, listening. Nothing stood out in the forest that he could see.

All the shrubbery looked the same. The only ones rustled were the ones he had walked through. The sun still shone brightly through the branches, leaving pockets of light on the forest floor. The sounds were still the same, with the birds chirping and the creek moving through the land, the trees still whispering in the breeze. 

Except…

Wait.

There was no breeze.

Slowly, in horror, Declan lifted his gaze upwards. The trees didn’t just sound like they were whispering, they were whispering. 

In Latin.

“What the hell,” he muttered.

_Have you come to help us?_

At that moment, he couldn't tell if he was grateful or resentful that he was fluent in the trees' language. God damn his father for convincing him to take Latin in Aglionby. He knew he should have just taken French.

He held his breath for a moment, uncertain. Then, feeling a bit self-conscious, he spoke to the trees.

He tried English first to see if the trees could understand him. “Help you with what?” he raised his voice, wondering how well trees could hear.

_We need a sacrifice._

Oh, well, time to leave. 

“No,” he said. “No, I have not come to help you. Not at all. So sorry. I’m going to be on my way now. Goodbye.”

He backtracked the way he came. The trees' voices followed him the entire time, never fading with the distance like normal voices. They didn't sound insistent or pushy. Their voices rang with patience and a dash of concern, the sound of someone wanting to make sure you understood your decision before sitting back to let you make it. It was so much more hospitable than hostile, and for that very reason, it made him uneasy. 

_A sacrifice is needed for us to thrive._

They said, almost singing it like a lively tune.

_Our sacrifice will thrive among us._

He didn’t reply, but some instinct tugging at edges of his focus told him there was no need. He could hear the trees along with the crunching of his footsteps, but they also echoed in his mind. It was all too possible that they could hear what was in his mind too.

_Do you seek happiness?_

_Help us, and we will help you._

Declan frowned.

_Nightmares will no longer be yours._

_Dreams will be all you know._

_Your greatest dreams, for yours to keep._

“Get out of my head!" He pressed his hands to ears like he could block the entrance to his mind. 

On the scale of oddities he had encountered in his life, this wasn’t that high on the list. Close to the bottom, in fact. It was the notion of it that disturbed him more. The possibility of dying, lured in by a siren’s song and then preyed upon, deeply unsettled him. He tried to shake off the unease, confident that no treasures would cause him to waver. No promises of riches or beautiful sirens, fancy cars or life of luxury could persuade him.

_Stay with us._

_We will make you happy._

The trees sounded so sweet. Not so much as though offering him a chance in a lifetime or three wishes, but sanctuary. They sounded so desperate to make him happy, as though they believed him unhappy.

Declan grit his teeth together, caught on that last thought when a voice broke through the trees' whisperings.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He came to a halt so quickly he nearly tripped. Quickly he regained his footing and spun around. He knew that voice, and yet he was still shocked frozen to his spot at the sight of the person coming out of the bushes behind him.

“Hey,” Ronan said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome to my little corner of AO3!
> 
> I'm new here! I'm so excited to post my first story. I hope you all enjoyed it.
> 
> (Also, if your name is Beatrice Mantz or any of the other names Blue listed above, please do not panic. I promise Blue was talking about totally different people.)
> 
> Constructive critique is always welcome!
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read my story today!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	2. Visitor

Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, although he’d appreciate it if he were known as just Gansey, strolled into the loud, messy establishment known as Nino’s, a grin on his face, and a glow to his eyes that seemed to brighten as he walked into the beloved diner. It was the first he’d been here since last fall, having been in Europe with Blue and their friend Henry for the past few months.

Adam and Ronan were behind him, and just knowing that if he turned his head slightly to the side, he would see them, made him inexplicably happy. After weeks apart, he was surrounded by his little ragtag gang again, his misfit family he held so dearly to his heart. Knowing that soon the three of them and Blue would be sitting together at their old table filled his chest with an elated, blissful feeling.

That feeling popped quite quickly.

"Hey, Jane," he announced loudly, cheerfully, and had been about to continue speaking to say something else when he took in the expression on Blue's face. Whatever he'd been about to say was replaced with, "Oh no." 

He had expected her to look tired, ragged even, with circles under her eyes in the color of her name, but not to this extreme. She appeared to have been awake through the entire night, but it was her eyes that concerned him most. They looked haunted and glazed over with dread as she watched the three of them approach, but not quite meeting any one of their faces.

The three boys halted, each of them coming to realize the stifling, ice-cold haze that circulated the table. They glanced at one another, once, before focusing back on her. She acknowledged that they were there, but said nothing. 

Adam dared to break the tension. “You saw someone?”

A vice seemed to have taken a hold of her vocal cords, but Blue managed a weak couple of words. “Mom did.”

He blanched. “Was it one of us?” he asked, quieter.

She shook her head, and the boys' breath came to them a little easier. They took their seats around the table, Gansey saddling up next to Blue, placing a warm hand over hers. Whatever she knew, it was devouring her, and Gansey had an inkling that as soon as she revealed it, it would be devouring the rest of them as well. 

"But it's someone we know.” It wasn’t a question.

With barely a tilt of her head, she nodded, confirming it.

“Who was it?” Adam dared again in the same quiet voice.

Several tense, unbearable seconds ticked by before Ronan took the silence and smashed it. “Well, keeping to yourself isn’t going to help anybody. Spit it out.”

Gansey flicked an irritated glance at him, but Ronan’s voice seemed to have knocked something loose in Blue. She shuddered as she released a loud exhale, and Gansey wondered if she had been holding her breath until then. He tightened his grip on her hand, and the little gesture spurred her on enough to straighten her back and, finally, meet the gazes of everyone at the table. Her voice was leveled and strong, but drowning in regret, and then Gansey realized that she wasn't looking at everyone at the table. 

She was looking directly at Ronan. “It’s Declan,” she said.

Never before had Gansey seen his friend go so pale.

* * *

Declan blinked. “Ronan?”

This was a first. Declan was used to explaining the actions he had already committed. This time, Ronan had caught him in the act, and of all the times he could have been caught in the act, it had to be this time. Now, when he was trespassing on sacred grounds.

“What are you doing here?” he accused, prepared for his younger brother to throw the question right back at him. He knew exactly how he was going to handle the argument from there. He would tell him he had no choice, that he had to come to the forest to investigate because Ronan never told him anything.

“Waiting for you to get here,” Ronan said simply.

He had been bracing himself for when that signature snarl would spread across his brother’s face. It didn’t, and Declan faltered.

“You’ve been...Hold on, what?” he squinted at him. “Why?”

“I wanted to see you.” Ronan’s shoulders weren’t tense, and his hands weren’t curled up into fists. He looked at Declan from where he stood ten or so feet away and smiled.

A real smile. Not the smug one he gave when he was going to do exactly what Declan had just told him not to do, not the vicious one when he was about to say something particularly nasty, not the relaxed one that told his older brother he gave exactly zero fucks about what he thought. He just...smiled. A simple smile Declan would sometimes get glances of when Ronan was talking with his friends before he realized that his older brother had walked onto the scene.

He almost wanted to check behind him to see if there was anything else Ronan could be so happy to see, but he knew there was nothing. Nothing but the woods that surrounded them, but Ronan had his eyes fixed purposely on Declan.

Declan felt...he didn’t know what to feel.

After staring at him for a long, startled moment, he was hit with a realization. “You’re not Ronan.”

“I am Ronan,” the thing that looked like Ronan said, then shrugged. “Just not the original.”

“So you’re a dream thing.” He figured as much. 

The dream thing’s eyes flicked to the scenery around them. “Everything you’ll find in this forest is.”

Declan took a second to think about a forest full of nothing but dream creations. A cold shiver ran down his back.

“But why would Ronan dream up a duplicate of himself?” he questioned. It was the one thing he couldn’t understand. His younger brother didn't need a reason to dream something. A vanishing forest? Sure. A sword that was eternally on fire? Absolutely. But he didn't know what could have spurred his brother to want to dream up a doppelganger. 

The dream thing snickered, but it didn't sound half as bitter as Declan was accustomed. "He didn't dream me, Declan. You did." 

“What?” Okay, now there were multiple things he didn’t understand. “No, I didn’t. I’m not a dreamer.”

The dream thing gave a whimsical twirl of his wrist. “In Cabeswater, you are.”

Declan eyed the forest around him warily. “That doesn’t make sense.”

"Sure it does." His brother’s lookalike rolled his eyes to the side like Declan was being purposely dense. It was such a perfect replica of Ronan's classic, sharp eye-roll that Declan felt his mind twist with the fact that it wasn't him. "You already know this place isn't a normal forest. When you're in here, you can dream anything. You dream it, Cabeswater makes it happen." 

His head hurt. “But why would I dream you?”

“Because _I’m_ your dream, Declan. What you want, what you wish for, what you can imagine...” He gave a gesture that might have been violá. “That’s me.”

“Which still makes no sense,” he argued. Lookalike Ronan made a groaning noise that indicated at rapidly descending patience. “You’re not what I dream about.”

“I’m not?” The dream thing was the one looking skeptical now. “So, you’re telling me that you don’t dream of seeing me? That you don’t want to see me?”

“I do want to see you...I mean, the real you. I mean, Ronan!” Declan pressed two fingers to his forehead, weary. “I do want to see Ronan—the real Ronan—but I could do that at any time." 

“And then, what? Does the ‘real’ Ronan want to see you too?” the dream thing asked, making quotation marks with his fingers.

Declan blinked and lowered his hand. When it came to answering difficult questions, he was the most skilled person he knew, but today, he could think of nothing to respond with.

“Because that’s your dream.”

Declan felt something tighten in his chest. He glared at him. “My dream is for you to not try to jump a fence whenever you see me coming?”

The dream thing started walking towards him at a leisurely pace. Declan didn’t feel threatened. Confused, but not threatened, so he let him.

“You already know what you want more than anything, but your dreams are things you want but thought you could never have.”

“Like?”

“Me,” the dream thing told him gently, more gently than Declan could ever recall hearing in Ronan’s voice. “Matthew. Mom. Dad.”

“That’s a dream that’s never going to happen.” He snapped.

“Except for here in Cabeswater,” said the lookalike. “They’re all here, safe and happy back home.”

There should be a limit to how much confusion one individual was allowed to have in a day. "At the Barns?" 

"Is there any other home?" He grinned mischievously. "Don't believe me, huh? Come on, I'll show you."

"Oh, no." As soon as Declan saw his brother’s lookalike begin to turn towards the forest, he dug his heels into the ground like he was worried the dream thing would resort to dragging him there. He tried to push away the thought that he was getting dirt on his new shoes. "I'm not falling for that."

He watched the dream thing do another perfect eye roll imitation. "Falling for what, Declan?"

"You're not really taking me to the Barns," he accused. He pointed in the direction of the fields far beyond their sight, where his car sat awaiting his return. "The Barns is that way."

"Not the Barns from your dreams.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "That one is this way."

He crossed his arms. “Don’t act like I don’t know what you’re trying to do.” 

"Which...is...?" he asked, dragging the words out wryly.

"The same thing those trees were trying to do!" He pointed at the nearest tree as though it held all the blame.

The Ronan lookalike glanced over at the tree curiously. "So you've talked to them too, huh?"

“You’re trying to lure me into the forest with your dreams and promises,” he said, voice rising, “and once you have me in your grasp you’ll rip the heart out of my chest or push me into some pit of snakes and feed my life force to your satanic talking trees.”

“Wow.” The dream thing said. “I think you have issues.”

Declan ignored him.“Well, nice try! I'm not falling for it." 

Once again he spun on his heel, pulling at the neckline of his jacket to emphasize his decision. He hadn't gone five steps when the dream thing's perfect Ronan voice had him slowing down.

“Cabeswater only wants a willing sacrifice." Like the trees had before, he didn’t sound hostile or pushy. He hadn’t even moved from the spot Declan had left him. "If you're not willing, then there's nothing to be afraid of." 

He tensed. “I never said I was afraid.”

“Then what’s holding you back, tough guy?” he called out with a roguish laugh. “Everyone’s at home, waiting for you, Declan.”

"I don't care." One of Declan’s many talents was lying convincingly.

"You say that, but I think you do.” One of Ronan’s many talents was knowing when Declan was lying. He supposed the dream Ronan had also inherited that. “I think you care a lot. I mean, the only reason Cabeswater would give you this, is if you didn't have it already."

Declan stopped walking away, pissed that he had only made it about fifteen feet before he wanted to turn around. Every story his father had ever told him, every blockbuster movie or fairy tale warned him to choose the sensible option and leave. Common sense told him to leave, but he didn’t want to. 

He didn’t feel in danger, he didn’t even feel enchanted or tempted. The dream thing was too frustrating to warrant any feelings of temptations. The only thing he noticed was that he didn’t particularly want to leave, at least not yet. The dream thing may not have been Ronan, but in recent years it was the closest Declan had come to a conversation with Ronan that had lasted longer than ten minutes. 

"I'm not going to let anything hurt you,” the dream thing assured, and despite his rough voice, it almost came across soft.

He felt half touched by the promise, and half offended. "I said I wasn't afraid!"

"Oh, that's right. I forgot.” There was such a slathering of purely concentrated mocking that, for a fraction of a second, Declan forgot that he wasn’t glaring at Ronan. “Nothing could possibly give you a frightening, huh? Nope. Just not possible. Born without fear. That's Declan Lynch right there." 

“Okay, shut up!” Declan tried to tune out the dream thing’s laughter as he thought. Whether or not dangers lied in the forest ahead, waiting for him to come across and trigger them, he had come here today with a purpose. He couldn’t very well return to D.C., continuing his studies and internships while knowing that his little brothers were visiting a cryptic forest that he knew nothing about. He would have taken any other alternative to find out more about the forest, but the only option he had was standing in front of him. The real Ronan was never going to tell him anything.

The dream thing smiled at him again.

“Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I hope you all had a wonderful first month of 2020!
> 
> Thank you for reading this chapter today! I hope you all enjoyed it, and remember, critique is always welcome! 
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	3. Following Dreams

“This is _bullshit.”_

Adam stood on the worn-down sidewalk on the side of Nino’s, watching Ronan wear down the sidewalk further with his furious pacing. 

Ronan wasn’t a pacer. When struck with something jarring or uncertain, he either moved fast and reckless or stood stone still until his thoughts were together. Upon hearing the news, though, he had surged up from the table and had been walking the length of the sidewalk ever since. Adam knew he needed space, and waited on the outskirts of his decided pacing line. He didn't even attempt to approach him, but that didn't stop Gansey and Blue from trying. 

For their attempts, Ronan spun on them. “You’re saying that my brother is just going to...going to, what? Just drop the fuck dead this year, and nobody can do shit about it?”

Blue had been chewing on her bottom lip for a while now. It looked pink and somewhat puffy as she spoke. "It's not a guarantee, but..." 

“But it is.” Ronan shook his head, looking like he needed to punch something, anything. He settled for the wall, and the other three collectively cringed at the sound the impact made. If Ronan had hurt any part of his hand, he wasn’t showing it.

“There’s no way to tell if it can change based on the decisions he makes or someone else...or if it’s set in stone.”

“Nothing’s truly set in stone,” Gansey said, and Blue didn’t argue because she had a feeling he was saying it mostly for Ronan’s benefit. “My spirit was at St. Mark’s church last year, and I’m still here.”

“I saw you die,” Ronan reminded him. He lowered his fist from the wall but didn’t uncurl it. “I saw you lying dead on the ground.”

And then he stopped talking, abruptly, and Adam knew he was thinking of his father, his mother, both of whom he had seen lying dead on the ground once. His father on their driveway, his mother in a forest.

Adam feared he was going to start imagining his brother lying dead in a similar fashion. His fear was proven correct as Ronan’s complexion dropped another shade then. Adam felt his chest twist with worry and pain as Ronan made another lap on the pavement.

“Okay, let’s break this down,” Gansey began with care. “How was he doing when you saw him this Sunday?”

“I didn’t see him Sunday,” he said, eyes fixed and furious on the cement beneath his shoes.

“You didn't." Gansey's expression went neutral, a look everyone mistook for calm, but for the three others in the parking lot, they knew it as distress. "He skipped church with you guys this week?" 

“He hasn’t been to the church in months.” Ronan decided to stop pacing then.

A pause from everyone. All of their concern collectively dialed up into dread. “Why did he stop?” Gansey asked next.

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t say?”

“No,” he snarled.

“That doesn’t sound...” Blue trailed off.

Adam finished the thought. “Very Declan-ish.”

“No,” Ronan said, sounding as though he was just coming to that realization. “It’s not. _Shit.”_

He went to his car, parked at the furthermost edge of the line of parking spaces along the sidewalk, and ripped open the driver’s side door. He slammed the door loud enough for it to echo across the lot and returned with a phone in hand. Already he was punching in a number. 

All three of them jumped forward at the same time. 

“Ronan, wait!” Blue ran up to him. He ignored her, but she planted herself firmly in his way. “We can’t just tell him this!”

“Let’s figure out what we’re going to say first,” Gansey said. “He’s going to know something’s up when he sees you’re calling.”

“I don’t care.” Ronan turned away from them, phone at his ear. “I need to know what the hell he’s doing right now.”

“Let me ask.” Gansey held out his hand. “I can ask without making him too suspicious.”

Ronan didn’t hand over his phone though. Instead, he lowered it, staring at it in a mix of shock and offense, as though whatever voice he had heard from it had deeply insulted him. 

“It went to voicemail,” he said, disbelieving. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“He could be in class,” Gansey tried, “Isn’t he still studying in D.C.?" but Ronan was already dialing again. Gansey sighed, knowing that two missed calls from his off-the-radar brother were going to send up dozens of red flags when Declan checked his phone.

“Answer your phone,” was all Ronan said to the voicemail the second time, blunt and sharp and leaving no room for dismissal, and hung up. 

After a beat of tense, eerie silence, Adam piped up. “What about Matthew?”

* * *

“What?”

“What’s wrong?”

“How the hell did we get here?”

When Declan had first spotted glimpses of yellow grass through the trees, he thought maybe they had come across another field, but they hadn’t. It was the exact same field he had driven through when he had first arrived at the entrance to the forest.

Even his car was there. Right there, park behind a thin line of trees, his attempt to hide it from anyone on the road.

The scene before him made even less sense than the person currently traveling with him. He had only walked in a straight path, as straight as a pathless forest would allow, since entering the forest. Never had he ventured in any other direction, and yet somehow it had seemed that at some point during his trek he had done a 180.

Without taking his eyes off the field, he rummaged through his pockets until he found his compass. He tugged it out and snapped it open. 

He stared at it, watching as it spun in circles. 

“What the fuck is wrong with this place.”

“Lots of things. But it’s not like you’ve seen any of that yet.” 

Declan glared at him. “Comforting.”

Dream Ronan walked over to take a peek at the compass. He moved his finger in a swirling motion above it. “I think your little tool is broken.”

“Your entire forest is broken.”

“Hey." 

Declan jumped at Dream Ronan's tone, which for regular Ronan, would have been a rare warning for an oncoming punch. 

Instead, this Ronan just snarled. "I'm not just going to stand here and let someone talk smack about my forest. Not even my brother." 

Declan wanted to snarl too. He wanted to snap something back as equally threatening, but the expression he saw stopped him. Even if the person he was talking to was a dream thing, that dream thing looked honestly offended, and yet, he hadn’t done anything hostile over it.

The real Ronan would have gotten physical over much less. 

He felt a twinge of guilt and turned off fight mode.

“Whatever,” he said, which in Lynch language could either mean an apology or an agreement, depending on the context.

Fight mode turned back on when Dream Ronan smacked the underside of his hand and popped the compass right out of his grip. It arched in the air and fell to the grasp of the tall grass some five feet away. 

“Now, stop being a prick and come with me.”

“My compass,” Declan said, stricken.

“Relax.” The dream thing with no concerns over someone else’s property turned back to the direction of the car. “I’ll get you one that actually works.”

“Excuse you, I got that one imported from Italy!”

He hurried over to inspect the area of grass where it had vanished, but Dream Ronan had already resumed his walk through the fields. He had hoped to find it quickly, but Ronan had never been a slow walker, and once he had made it more than twenty feet away, Declan abandoned the search. He hesitated just long enough to pout before jogging the distance to catch up.

“So you can just leave Cabeswater at any time?” he asked once he had reached his side. He glanced back at the forest’s barrier, the same sight he had been staring at with trepidation less than an hour before.

The thought that any dream creature could waltz out of there and into the real world left him queasy, but Dream Ronan only looked confused. 

“We’re still in Cabeswater, Declan,” he said, like how one would say that an apple is a fruit, that a sparrow is a bird, that you have to put on shoes before leaving the house.

He froze. “Right now?”

“Yes, Declan. Right now.”

He pointed back the forest. “But it’s right over there. We literally just left it.”

Dream Ronan gave the same sigh Declan had used countless times before: like his brother was hopeless. Declan learned that he did not appreciate being on the receiving end of it.

“Everything that you’re looking at now is made by Cabeswater.” He tilted his head to where the Volvo was parked. “Even your car.”

“That’s not my car?” He stared at it, feeling deceived. 

He pulled the keys from his pocket and hit the button. The Volvo welcomed his return with brightened headlights and a satisfying _beep beep._

“Your keys will work for both of them,” Dream Ronan explained, then held out his hand. “But if you feel uncomfortable driving a dream-made vehicle...”

He tightened the hold on his keys. “Not going to happen.”

He shrugged. “Was worth a shot.”

He unlocked it as they drew near, running his hand across the hood as he walked to the driver's side. It felt so smooth, so real, and so much like how he knew his car. He had a difficult time convincing himself that his actual car was on the other side of the forest, and not right here with him. 

He allowed himself a small smile and gestured to the Volvo. “Step into my office,” he told him.

He had meant it as a joke but hadn't realized the amount of shock that would strike his system the moment Ronan actually opened the passenger side door. It was a scene right out of his wildest dreams.

This wasn't his real brother, he reminded himself. Getting his real brother into his car was one of the most difficult tasks Declan had ever attempted in his life and had only managed to accomplish in doing once. Once. And the only reason he had succeeded was that he had busted out the emergency _I-Need-Ronan_ kit: a pleading Matthew, a compelling story about their father, and every drop of patience he had to offer. Even then Ronan had tried to escape.

He needed to stop getting so excited over things that weren’t actually happening.

“Were you planning to actually drive the car or just stare at it?” Dream Ronan asked from over the roof.

He went to respond with something just as snide, but Dream Ronan slid in and shut the door before he could, so Declan settled for bristling beside the car in silence for a second before getting in.

He buckled his seatbelt as he would any day, checking the position of the rear-view mirrors, wheel, and seat until Dream Ronan started impatiently glaring at him. Everything in the car was precisely how he had left it, right down to the slot in front of the cupholders where he had placed his phone charger and two pens. He always kept two in case someone took the other. As subtly as he could with Dream Ronan watching him, he glanced at the backseat and found his scarf neatly folded there in case he needed it.

Creepy.

He put the key into the ignition and turned it, marveling as his car rumbled to life. Even the heat turned on like it had been when he had been driving it last.

Then his passenger reached for the dashboard and Declan promptly blocked it with his hand.

For a moment, the two of them only stared at each other.

“What?” Dream Ronan challenged.

He didn’t care what kind of Ronan was with him. If the car was as accurate as it had so far proven to be, there was no way Declan was turning on that CD player. “No music.”

“What the hell, man.” Dream Ronan looked at him like he had just been told something outlandish, like there wasn’t going to be any oxygen in the car either. “What kind of shit office doesn’t have music?”

“A lot of them, actually.” Once he was sure Dream Ronan was sulking with his gaze out the window, he dropped his hand and began to carefully pull the car out of the field. "And I need you to be paying attention. I have some questions for you." 

He sulked harder. “I didn’t realize your office doubled as an interrogation room.”

“All the best offices do.”

“Well, your interrogation room sucks. You don’t even have one of those lamps that’s supposed to hang over my head.”

He picked up speed once they were on the asphalt. “I’ll be sure to add it to the grocery list.”

Strange to think that they weren’t actually leaving the forest, though it appeared that way in his rear-view mirror, but were on a road heading deeper into Cabeswater.

Deeper into his dreams, if that was to be believed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed chapter three today. I had a blast writing it this week. I do hope it was a good chapter, do let me know if you thought it was!
> 
> Critique always welcome! 
> 
> Have a lovely day everyone!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	4. Home Sweet Home

Ronan leaned against the doorframe to Matthew’s dorm, watching as his little brother tapped away at the screen of his phone. Ronan had already left a message on Declan’s voicemail, in line behind his three other ones, each one of those louder and more enraged than the last.

“Let me know as soon as he answers, okay?” he said, trying to keep his tune cool, calm, like his usual relaxed self when with his little brother. He had his gang outside the school, waiting in the Pig, because having all of them march into the dorm probably would have started to worry Matthew.

“Sure,” he said cheerfully, and Ronan relaxed a little as no signs of concern had appeared in Matthew’s demeanor. He only seemed curious and a little confused. “How come you want me to talk to him?”

Ronan shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t pressed against the doorframe. “Haven’t heard from him in a while. Probably should see how he’s doing.”

A sad look overcame Matthew then, moving his gaze from Ronan to the floor. “Yeah, I haven’t heard from him in a while either.”

Ronan stiffened a little. “How long is a while?”

Unbeknownst to his brother, Ronan's nerves were frying hotter and hotter the longer Matthew took to think about it. His head tilted from side to side as he estimated in his head. 

“I don’t know. Like...Three, four months?”

Warning bells went off. That couldn’t be right. Strange enough that Declan had gone such a while without contacting him, but Matthew he was close to. 

“And he hasn’t spoken to you at all? No calls, no messages, no—”

He stopped as Matthew shook his head, that sad look back full force. “Nothing. He won’t reply to anything I ask him...” He stared at the phone in his hands, then back to Ronan desperately. “Is he mad or something?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” He was already backing out of the room. He needed to get to the others. No, he needed to get to D.C. Right now. “Remember, call me as soon as you hear from him, got it?”

“Wait, where are you going?” Matthew jumped from the bed and stopped at the door, watching his brother sprint down the hallway. “Ronan, wait!”

But Ronan didn’t wait. Already he had disappeared around the corner, the corner all the way at the end of the hall.

Matthew didn’t know if he should be worried but...he was.

* * *

Declan had a list of questions prepared, in the order of possibly life-threatening to mildly concerned with. He forgot what question he had started asking the first time they passed another driver on the two-way road. His eyes followed the pickup truck as it drove off behind them until Dream Ronan calmly pointed out they were about to veer off into the fields. By the time they reached town, he had forgotten his list entirely.

He couldn’t tell the difference between the real Henrietta and this one. 

There were people, as many people as he would have expected driving into town on any given Thursday, going about their day like they had no idea that they were all dream creatures. 

He even had one Aglionby student, his uniform standing out like a proud flag through the windshield of his Supra, honk at him even though Declan had the right of way. Dream Ronan must have known him because he flipped him the bird before Declan smacked him and told him to roll the window back up.

Aglionby Academy itself was exactly as Declan would have envisioned it, and passing it brought him memories of a time when he had lived in one of the dorms there. It was the same dorm he had shared with brother Matthew, the same dorm where he had nearly been killed by a man and had to be taken to the hospital via ambulance after.

He remembered lying there, bleeding on the floor and calling his brothers, but Matthew had left his phone on the bed and Ronan hadn’t answered.

Declan quickly dismissed that line of thinking and focused on other sites as they drove through town. He saw Monmouth Manufacturing, the place Ronan had lived in with three of his Aglionby friends. The four of them were terribly fond of the place, as it had become a sort of refuge to them, a place to hide from outside world problems, if only temporarily. Declan had visited there once with his girlfriend but had left after Ronan had made it clear that they weren't welcome there. 

He passed Nino’s next, his brother’s favorite restaurant. He and those same friends would meet up there like it was their secret headquarters, discussing confidential matter. Declan hadn’t eaten there in a while, not since he and Ronan had gotten into a fistfight in the parking lot one night.

 _“I’ll never forgive you,”_ his brother had told him.

Declan swallowed and decided not to look in that direction until he couldn’t see the restaurant anymore.

Then there was St. Agnes church. 

Okay, that one, at least, should have brought a few good feelings. For a long time, it was the only place where he and Ronan could be anywhere near each other without worrying about a fight breaking out, but all he could remember upon seeing the old building was the time he had driven two hours from D.C. to be there on Sunday morning, only for Ronan to turn around and leave the moment he realized Matthew wasn’t going to show up. 

It was in that moment, sitting there in the church, that Declan had realized Ronan only tolerated him for Matthew’s sake. If Matthew wasn’t there, there was no reason for Ronan to be.

He was starting to remember why he always kept his eyes on the road now.

“You alright?” Dream Ronan asked, pulling Declan from his thoughts.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked back.

“You look like you just bit into a lemon.”

He laughed humorlessly. “You say I look like that all the time.”

“You look like you just bit into two lemons.”

“I just don’t like how there’s another Henrietta here. It’s weird.” It wasn’t completely a lie. Perhaps it was for that reason that Dream Ronan let it pass.

“What’s wrong with good old Henrietta?” he teased. “I thought you loved this place.”

Did he?

Declan would answer that question another day.

“I don’t hate it. I just don’t know why there’s another one.”

“This is your dream,” he told him simply.

Declan swore he felt an eye twitch. “You’re going to have to stop using that as an excuse for everything.”

Dream Ronan sounded offended. “It’s the truth, dipshit. What am I supposed to say?”

“How is this place my dream?”

Dream Ronan knocked the back of his head against the car seat headrest. He gave a deep inhale, and Declan had to wonder if he was praying for the Lord to give him strength. He had never thought of his brother as someone who would do that, but that was certainly what Dream Ronan looked like he was doing now.

“Think of it like this,” he began. “If this was Adam’s dream, this would be Harvard right now. If this was Gansey’s, we’d probably be in whatever medieval time period Glendower had lived in. For Blue, it’d be—I don’t know, any place that had yogurt. Are you getting all this? Am I going too fast for you?”

He frowned, glancing at the passing town one more time before locking his gaze on the road for good. “Guess I’m not a very creative dreamer.”

Dream Ronan sighed, relieved that his brother had finally paused with all the questioning. “I don’t know if I’d say that. Your dream isn’t that much different from mine.”

He hadn’t expected to hear that. 

Ever. “Really?”

Dream Ronan shrugged. Unlike Declan, he had his gaze fully committed to the scenery outside. “If this was my dream right now, we’d be heading to the same place.”

Declan went quiet as he let that sink in. 

Dream Ronan subtly reached for the dashboard and Declan, without taking his eyes off the road, smacked his hand away.

The Barns lied on the outskirts of Henrietta, but despite all the distractions, he found the place quickly. He had the route to the Barns memorized, even if he wished he didn’t. He recognized the oak trees flanking the drive long before the house came into view.

Last time he had visited, he had narrowed his focus to the spot directly in front of him, both while he had been driving down the path and again when walking it up to the house.

He took a deep breath as he brought the car to a stop. Now, he looked up.

He had only been to the Barns once since Niall Lynch had died. There had been so much going on at the time. He had been too exhausted, too worried to have noticed any emotions he might have felt returning to it. He had also been relieved that he hadn’t noticed any emotions he might have felt returning to it.

Now, there was nothing to do but look at the Barns and feel.

For all the reminiscences of his life that the rest of Henrietta held, it had nothing on the slideshow that the house before him had been building up over the years. No matter where he looked, he found something on the property that resurrected a memory.

Each one dug into him a little bit more.

He consciously tightened his grip on the steering wheel, refusing to let one of his hands move to his chest. He felt like he should be bleeding, that a wound that had never been stitched up properly had just been torn open.

To be honest with himself, he'd rather be bleeding literally.

“The Barns,” Declan said, because he felt like it needed to be declared. 

Dream Ronan studied him. “Your home,” he corrected.

Now he wanted to place a hand to the bottom of his throat, where the pain had moved. No one had ever called the Barns his home before. It was Ronan’s home, the family home. He had never even thought of it as his, never thought he had a right to, but now he felt like he had just been given permission. His home.

He needed air.

In one rapid-fire sequence, he had freed himself from the seatbelt, kicked the door open, jumped out, and threw the door shut again before Dream Ronan could say anything. He felt better to be moving, to think about where he was going to place his feet next and nothing else. Thankfully, Dream Ronan didn't say anything as he came around to the other side of the car. 

His dream brother paused in front of the tree that marked one of the unofficial parking spots of the driveway. He studied the branches for a while before reaching up to pluck a plum from its branches, toss it to Declan, then reaching up to get another.

Declan caught it without much thought but gaped at how real it felt in his palm. He had trouble convincing his mind he wasn't holding a real fruit. He looked up to find Dream Ronan taking a bite of his own, watching him expectantly.

"I'm good," he said and tossed the fruit back. 

“I thought you liked plums.” Dream Ronan didn’t sound bothered, just surprised.

“They’re fine. I just don’t want to eat anything while I’m here.”

His dream brother shrugged and took another bite. "If I was going to poison you, I'd go classic and use an apple." 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

He would, actually, and aside from the usual edible items he planned on keeping a safe distance from that fruit in particular now.

They had barely begun to walk away from the car when the sound of a wooden door smashing into the wall halted them both. Something launched out of the house, causing Declan’s fight or flight instinct to kick in until he noticed the blur of a bright, red sweatshirt and the sun shining off of a head full of golden curls.

“Is that who I think it is?” the blur shouted.

It was a near-impossible task to make Declan smile without him actively allowing it, but one person never failed to do that. 

“Matthew!”

The youngest of the Lynch family leapt off the porch and raced across the lawn. Declan couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face as he was tackled into a hug, even after he realized this wasn’t the real Matthew. The kid was just so happy. Declan hugged him back as fiercely as he would have the real one.

“Great, you’re already here.” Dream Ronan came over with a grin and a fist bump for the Dream Matthew. He tossed his younger brother the plum he had been holding, and the youngest of the brothers asked no questions and simply ate half of it in a single bite. Declan dismissed the twinge of regret he felt watching them, feeling stupid at the desire to want to eat one too just because his dream brothers were.

“Matthew?” A lovely voice called out from within the house. “Why is the door open? It’s so chilly outside.”

Declan’s eyes widened. 

“Mom?”

His two dream brothers flashed him smiles and hurried up the porch’s stairs, him trailing behind in a daze until he stopped at the bottom step. He could have fallen into a hole for his lack of attention on anything else, his gaze locked on the doorway, on the person walking out of it.

A woman in a simple pale dress and golden hair all down her back stepped onto the porch curiously. Her eyes lit up upon seeing her two sons, as though she could think of no better sight than to watch the two boys hurry up the wooden steps to greet her.

Declan missed what the other two said to her, their words coming to him indistinct and fuzzy. It wasn’t until she spoke again did her voice bring him back to the moment.

She reached out with a dainty hand and pressed the back of her fingers against Matthew’s cheek.

“My love,” she said to him, because he was her favorite.

She touched Ronan’s face next. “My flowers and ravens,” she told him, so he would know she remembered.

Declan’s breath caught somewhere in his chest as she finally noticed him still on the lawn. Aurora Lynch’s smile could compare to no other.

“My baby,” she said, because he was her first.

“Mom!”

By the time she had started reaching a hand out to him, beckoning him to her, he had already shot up the stairs and pulled her into a hug. She laughed as her feet were lifted off the floorboards, a musical sound he felt blessed to listen to once more. She smelled sweet, just as he remembered. Like the garden he used to find her in. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, but not painfully. Her hands were too soft, too caring, to ever cause pain. 

"How I've missed you." She said it softly, as though she thought the moment too tender to be treated with anything but the lightest of gests.

Declan wished he could say something, wished he could tell her how much he missed her too, how much it hurt him every second he remembered she wasn’t there.

A raspy, not at all soft voice broke through his thoughts.

“It’s about time.”

His breath was unlodged then, let out in a gasp. Carefully, he set his mom down. In the shadows of the doorway stood an imposing man. He had a devilishly charming smile, same as Matthew’s, and a dangerous glint to his eyes, same as Ronan’s. When he stepped into the sunlight, he took hold of the attention of everyone before him and spoke with a voice that demanded to be heard, same as Declan.

Declan stared into sharp blue eyes identical to his own, but it wasn’t the color or likeness that had rendered him breathless. It was how the eyes stared right back into his. It was how the man focused on him fully, specifically, as though there was no one else to see. As though there was no one else the man wanted to see. 

He struggled for words and only came up with one.

“Dad.” 

“Declan,” Niall Lynch said, but when he said _Declan_ , it didn’t sound like he meant to say _Declan_. 

It sounded like he meant to say _welcome home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that. This Friday ended up being Valentine’s Day! Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! <3 And Happy International Fanworks Day! I know that’s tomorrow, but I wanted to make sure I wished everyone a Happy IFD before the day arrived!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! I’m sorry this one’s so much longer than the others before it. I keep getting carried away with Declan and Ronan’s dialogue. I’ll make the next one shorter so they balance out!
> 
> I wish you all a lovely day!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	5. To Feel Missed

Mark Randal matched Ronan’s glare with a steady, unimpressed one, and Gansey worried that he would have to hold Ronan back from lunging across the desk to claw off his necktie.

“The hell you mean, he’s not here? This is the goddamn university he enrolled in! I know because he wouldn’t shut up about it!”

“What my friend means to say—”

He fought off any attempts Gansey gave at stepping in front of him, shouting, “What I mean to say is _where the hell is he?”_

“I don’t know.”

With those simple words, Gansey feared that they would all be escorted out via campus security. He could tell Blue and Adam had the same premonitions because they came up to flank Ronan on either side.

“He finished last year’s courses just fine.” Randal continued. “He was studying under me for extra credit, working in an internship, and had excelled beyond anyone’s expectations. The young man had a promising future here, but he never returned for the next semester.”

His choice of words, _never_ , sent a jolt down everyone’s spine. The man looked unhappy and disappointed and thoroughly irritated with the interruption of his day, but it was the concern that knitted his brows together that had the group on edge. 

“Has he spoken to you since then?” Gansey tried, but already Randal was shaking his head.

“Didn’t even bother to return my calls.”

* * *

Never in his life had Declan been the center of attention in the Lynch household. Not during his birthday, not when he had been given his first car, not when he had graduated with honors. He didn’t even know if any of his family knew that he had graduated Aglionby Academy with honors. He had told his brothers, but he didn’t think they had been listening. Well, he knew Ronan hadn’t been, anyway. With Matthew, there was a 50/50 chance that he would remember.

He never felt bitter over it—at least, he didn’t think he did. Simply put, there was always something more interesting happening in the lives of the Lynches. He had grown up to accept this and had convinced himself that being dull was a lot safer than being interesting. 

Now everywhere he turned, there was someone wanting to talk to him. He could tell which subjects bored his company, but the fact that they all still made an effort to listen, even when his brothers looked to be on the brink of falling asleep, made his heart swell with untapped joy.

His father leaned against the kitchen counter and questioned him about what made him want to move to the big city. His mother asked if he had made any new friends, what were their names, and if they were nice. Matthew wanted to know if the food was as good as they say and if there were any giant, three-story arcades in D.C. There were, but Declan only knew that through colleagues and had no personal experience to offer up. His brother seemed fine with that, shrugged and moved on to the next curiosity he had, but Ronan didn't appear pleased at all by the answers. 

There was so much attention being directed his way that he was starting to get high off it. He felt jittery, overwhelmed, as though he had consumed too much sugar.

He felt ready to burst.

Out of the blue, a memory struck him, from long ago, when he had been four. His father had gifted him with checkers on Christmas Eve. They had been purple, his favorite color, and to such his appeal that he had immediately ran up to his room and cried until he had fallen asleep.

He could never tell if he hated that memory or not.

“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Dream Ronan mentioned, pulling back the curtains of the window. Everyone else were still chatting away back in the kitchen, helping where they could with Dream Aurora as she prepared an early dinner. Declan didn’t know why he had followed him out to the living room. He hadn’t even been asked. “We should put the cars in the garage.”

Ronan could have gone outside and pulled his own car into the garage, leaving the Volvo to face the weather alone. That’s what he would have expected Ronan to do.

But, no. His brother made the conscious choice to speak with him. Casually. With no incitement, bribery, or outside forces needing to intervene for him to do so.

That was it. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“I don’t know if there’s enough room. If not, we’ll just put tarps over it.” The keys jingled as Dream Ronan plucked them from the little table that served as the drop-off for all the miscellaneous items someone could bring into the house. He turned around, finding only the couch and chairs to greet him. “Declan?”

As soon as he got to his room, Declan locked the door and pressed his back against. He pressed his fists to his eyes, willing himself not to tear up. He was almost twenty, not four.

His entire life revolved around avoiding and dealing with the various shocking and painful circumstances that were thrown at him. He had grown so accustomed to them that seldom did his heart rate ever pick up anymore. Right now, his heart pounded so fiercely that he heard the blood rush in his ears.

When he had talked, his father had listened. When he had entered a room, Ronan didn’t try to leave. Not once did his mother tell him he should smile. Not once did Matthew point out how uptight he was being.

Nothing had happened to cause him pain.

So why was there so much of it?

He jumped as he felt more than heard the knocks at the door.

“Hey, dumbass! I was talking to you. What’d you run in here for?” When Declan failed to respond, the door handle shook. The lock kept it from moving much. “Declan?” 

He heard the shift to concern in his voice and slid to the carpet floor, trying to ignore how weak his legs felt. 

More knocking.

“...Are you okay?”

Ronan never asked that. In all his life, Declan could not recall one time his brother had directed that question at him.

His throat felt swollen.

The knocking shook the door now. “Answer or I’m breaking this damn thing down.”

“Yeah,” Declan said. He cleared his throat, but didn’t sound much better when he said, “Yeah, I’m good.”

The concern he heard had been shoved aside by anger. “Stop lying and tell me what’s wrong.”

“Just go away,” he snapped. 

“Why? What the hell did I do?”

“Nothing! Just—Go away. I want to be alone.” 

“You’re alone all the time! Now open up.” The knocks subsided from wood splintering to simply making the hinges creak. “Before everyone else gets up here looking for you.”

He buried his face in his hands and breathed in. No one ever looked for him. People looked for Ronan all the time, Matthew sometimes, but never him.

He put as much strength into his voice as he could. “I just need a minute.”

“Why?”

“To breathe.”

“You can’t breathe with me in there with you?”

“No.”

He listened to an unidentifiable string of curses, muffled by the barrier between them. He jumped again as something pressed against the door. Although there was nothing to see, he looked over his shoulder, knowing Dream Ronan was on the other side. He couldn’t hear his breathing, couldn’t even see anything beneath the door from where he was sitting, but he felt him there.

He let his head fall back until it clunked against the door. He kept his eyes on the ceiling, because the ceiling was the only thing that made sense right now. “You don’t have to stay here. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Like I’m going to leave you here to wallow in whatever mood you got yourself in.” 

Declan sighed in confusion because that _should_ have sounded like a snide remark, a snip or a snap or something that had a pointy end to it. Instead, it came across more as a fact, all blunt with nothing sharp attached to it.

Seconds of silence ticked by, broken only by Declan’s breathing and his heart beating away as he waited for it to settle.

“Do you want me to leave?” Dream Ronan finally asked.

He didn’t have to be asked to know the answer, but it took a long moment before he could muster up the nerve to say, “No.”

“Good, because I wasn’t going to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I’m sorry this chapter was a little later than usual, but I hope you all still liked it.
> 
> I want to thank you all for the all love and support this story had gotten! It makes me so happy to see so many people enjoying it! Thank you! <3
> 
> Critique always welcome! I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve the story!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	6. Wake Up Call

They had visited his townhouse, with Ronan breaking down the door, but it had been empty and covered in a layer of dust, some of the food in the fridge having long spoiled. It looked as though Declan had meant to return to it, and never did. 

Ronan had been through a lot in his life, but he had never felt this close to hyperventilating. 

“Could he already…" He didn't look at Blue, but he waited for her to answer, his grip on the stirring wheel crushing. They had all decided to pile into Ronan's BMW for the drive to D.C. because now wasn't the time for one of the Camaro's breakdowns. The only downside had been Gansey having to continually remind Ronan that getting pulled over by a cop was going to cost them more time than if they hadn't been going thirty miles over the speed limit. 

“Anytime between this St. Mark’s Eve and the next,” she whispered.

“I don’t think anything would have happened,” Gansey said. Although he didn’t say it, everyone could hear the _yet_ at the end of his words. “We only found out about this today. Let’s give him at least twenty-four hours to answer our calls.”

“Declan is the kind of person who leaves the phone on the bathroom sink when he takes a shower,” Ronan said. His knuckles were turning white. “He should have answered by now.”

Blue held out her hand as Gansey was leaving another message on his phone, probably telling Declan that his brother was about to lose it and that he needed to answer them soon. He gave Blue an inquisitive look but handed the device over without question.

“Let’s go to my place,” Blue said, dialing. “Mom can help us find out where he is.”

Adam had been considering whether reaching out to touch Ronan’s wrist would make things worst or not, but now he twisted around from where he sat in the passenger seat, eyes bright. “Are we going to find him psychically?”

Blue pressed the phone to her ear as she said, “That is exactly what we’re going to do.”

* * *

Declan woke up to screaming.

First, he felt shocked at the mere prospect of waking up, which meant at some point he had fallen asleep. He only had a precious second to appreciate the shock of that before that shock had to be transferred to the fact that someone in the house, with the room still dark blue in the early hours of dawn, was screaming.

He shot out of bed at the same moment Dream Ronan did. 

Which made him wonder why Dream Ronan was there too.

Also, Matthew, who fumbled to the floor in a bundle of comforters and a muffled, “Oomph.”

He gave a quick survey of the room. This was his room.

Why were both his brothers in his room? 

He supposed he would have to work out the details later. The scream had been feminine, and there was only one female in the house. 

His reaction speed matched that of Dream Ronan’s as they both ran into the hallway at nearly the same time, taking off in the direction of their parents’ bedroom. They could hear an unfamiliar rustling sound coming through the walls, accompanied by the frantic yelps of their mother. Dream Ronan placed his hand on the doorknob first, so Declan stood behind him and prepared to be the first one to run inside as soon as his dream brother ripped it open.

For a brief moment, he wished he had brought something to defend himself with, but he knew better than anyone, it didn't take much to be too late. He was fully prepared to fight whatever was inside with his bare hands. When a Lynch was in danger, Declan always made sure he was the one in the line of fire.

“Open it!” he barked, even as Dream Ronan already was.

The two boys caught the last bit of what sounded like their father’s shout of “Don’t open the door!” as it was thrown open. The source of the rustling revealed itself to be a black swarm of what could have possibly been very large insects. They burst from the room in a tidal wave of flying, screaming creatures and engulfed them both.

Declan _shrieked._

He could hear the beat of hundreds of wings around him, many of them smacking his legs, torso, and head. He threw his arms up to protect his face, feeling fur and tiny pinprick claws as they scraped against exposed skin. Those claws sunk into his clothes, and with the little bit of added weight, he realized many of the creatures had latched onto him.

He started screaming, “Get them off! Get them off!" as he ran down the hallway. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, fearful to lose one to the creatures. He could feel more and more snatching onto the back of his shirt, his pants, his hair. For the ones airborne, he could feel their leathery wings striking every part of his body.

“Declan,” Dream Niall said, but when he said _Declan,_ it didn’t sound like he meant to say _Declan_. It sounded like he meant to say _Calm the fuck down._ “Hold still.”

He froze at the pinching grip that took ahold of his forearm. He could still hear the rustling and flapping, all of it amplified as he stood trapped in the center of it, but if Dream Niall didn’t have any concerns...then Declan knew it was okay to let go of some of his own.

He caught the sound of raucous laughter dancing among all the rest of the noise that filled the hallway. Already he had begun bristling at the source before peeking an eye open and finding it. Through the clouds of black creatures, he could see his two dream brothers by the railing next to the stairs, with Ronan leaning over it like he needed the support. They were red in the face and wheezing.

He felt his own face turning red as he shouted, “It’s not funny!” because it was the exact opposite of funny. He had genuinely believed that he had just been thrown into a life-or-death scenario, which wasn't a rare occurrence but still warranted.

Declan wanted to march over and strangle them.

Dream Niall regained his attention with a snap of his fingers. “They’re not gonna hurt you, boy,” he told him, displeased. “You’re probably scaring the daylights out them, though.”

The black things still fluttered around, a few darting awfully close to Declan’s face and making him jump, but Dream Niall was as still as stone, despite many of them clinging to his nightshirt and hair.

Declan looked down at his own clothes, the same button-down shirt and jeans he had worn from yesterday. He lifted his arm, where four of the creatures were hanging from the sleeve. The largest one rivaled the size of a sparrow and the smallest was about as big as a hummingbird. He recoiled at the sight of their compact little bodies, looking like they could begin crawling up his arm and attack his face when ready. Their eyes blended in with their fur, but once he found them, he realized all four were gazing straight at him. He then noticed ears, long enough to reach down their backs, pressed flat against their heads. He relaxed as he realized they were bats.

He glanced back up at the hallway.

Lots and lots of bats.

Alright, so, not bugs then, which was a monumental improvement.

Dream Niall began detangling the one that had gotten caught in his hair, a difficult task seeing as his hair was long enough to touch his shoulders. “They don’t bite,” he assured his son.

With some wrangling, Declan pried off one from his sleeve, choosing to ignore the rip he heard. It easily fit in the palm of his hand. He held it close to his chest in case it tried to escape, but the bat didn’t move, not even to get into a more comfortable position. Its wide blown eyes never strayed from his face, never blinked. He could feel its heart rate in his hand, going rapid. Even on an animal, he recognized that expression, the look of someone who feared for their life.

He felt terrible.

With just one finger he stroked the top of its head, hoping to provide some form of comfort.

He squinted and noticed tiny, near-invisible specks of yellow in the bat's otherwise black fur. He tilted it to get a closer look and watched as the bat seemed to reflect light that wasn't there. It gave off a yellow glare reminiscent of a lava lamp, or a low-grade strobe light. A normal bat from afar, like any other he’d seen flying the Virginian skies at dusk, but up close, clearly a dream creature. 

He looked up, puzzled. “Did you dream them?”

Dream Niall didn’t hesitate with that one and proudly exclaimed, “Course I did!” He wore a twist to his smile as he examined the one in his hands. His eyes shone triumphantly, a look Declan hadn’t seen in years but recognized as though he had seen that same look just yesterday. “Was hoping to save them ‘til spring, but here they are.”

Declan’s thoughts went in circles as he wondered how a dream-created person could create dream things...in a dream-created place...that Declan had dreamt?

His mind felt broken thinking about it.

“Oh, goodness.” Dream Aurora popped her head out from the bedroom, her sweet voice thankfully stopping Declan from teetering on the verge of a migraine. Her hand flew up to her mouth, but she wasn't staring at any one of the dozens upon dozens of bats surrounding her, including the ones clinging to her nightgown. She was staring at the ornate clock on the wall. “We slept in!”

Declan checked the clock. He arched an eyebrow at it, then at her. “Mom, it’s six-thirty.”

Dream Ronan had recovered from the laughing, and now all humor left him as he spun to face the clock. He stared at it as though it had offended him. “It’s how late?”

Only Dream Matthew was left still grinning, undeterred by the time as he leaned against the railing and shrugged. “I can always just skip school today. I mean, you guys let me yesterday.”

“Oh, no, we couldn’t do that!” His mother fretted. “Isn’t there a big test coming up?”

The youngest Lynch deflated. “Well, yeah...”

Dream Aurora ran back into the room, reappearing a moment later with fluffy pink slippers and a matching robe to keep her warm. There were still a few bats clinging to it, also appreciating the warmth, but she didn’t seem to mind (or possibly hadn’t noticed) them as she finished tying the knot around her waist. For all the screaming she had done not ten minutes earlier, she appeared as fine as ever. She hurried over to her two youngest and shooed them towards the stairs.

“Come along, now! You two need to eat something before you leave.”

“Why are they both going to Aglionby?” Declan felt confusion, and then a familiar surge of fury, all thoughts of the bats tossed aside. “I thought Ronan was a drop-out.”

Dream Ronan had just turned towards the steps when he froze, and Declan knew he had made a mistake. His dream brother turned back around to face the obvious distaste, the disapproval, the disappointment, and anything else that started with a _dis_ that could be heard in Declan’s voice. His suddenly tensed shoulders and pointed expression was the exact response Declan had always received anytime he brought up this topic.

He hadn’t meant to snap. He really, really hadn’t. Usually, he did. Usually, he poured as much venom into his voice as he could until it started to overflow with how mortified he was that Ronan hadn't applied himself to his schooling at all. He was shocked by how much of a reflex it had become.

“I am,” Dream Ronan told him, arms crossed. He said it with pride. He said it with a challenge.

Declan could feel his blood pressure sky-rocketing, the signs of that migraine returning. It was like knowing the floor in front of him was riddled with traps but still wanting to surge forward just to prove that he could. Because he could. He could survive the traps, he had before, albeit not unscathed, but always the lure was there that it would be worth it in the end. He had a whole arsenal at ready to take down his brother in this very argument, even if Declan went down burning with him. For the past year, he had been waiting for it.

Take the bait, an inner voice whispered to him. He always took the bait, it was so justifiable, so easy. Look, it was right there! Just take it. Take the bait. Take the bait. _Take the bait—_

He swallowed, or tried to, and stared at the wooden panels below. “Right. Just checking. Wasn’t sure.”

He had spoken through a concussion with less pain than that.

For a tense few seconds, his dream brother only stared at him. Their other brother and mother waited patiently on the first steps of the stairs, unshaken and unable to recognize the beginnings of a fight. Their father only stood off to the side, waiting to see how this played out. He looked almost bored.

Finally, Dream Ronan shrugged, and the entire argument was dropped. 

The amount of relief Declan felt could have knocked him to the floor.

If Dream Ronan noticed, he didn’t show it. “I only go to Aglionby to drop off Matthew, but I’m guessing you guys will need help here?”

He directed the question at his father. At once, everyone seemed to remember their audience of a possible couple hundred.

Declan had been so concerned with his dream brother that he had completely forgotten, even as the one in his hair had climbed over to his bangs. He eventually noticed as it leaned over to peer at his face and chirped. He plucked it and dropped it next to the other one in his hand. It looked more orange when sitting next to the yellow one. Both of them now sat there in his hands, chirping incessantly. Not only did they sound like songbirds, but he also swore they sounded concerned, as though they had noticed his distress, as though they were asking if he was alright.

Gently he placed a hand over them to muffle the noise. They kept chirping.

Dream Niall untangled another one from his hair. Spooked, it flew off. “I don’t think they’ll be too difficult to catch, but we’ll have to be careful. I wouldn’t reckon they’re very durable things.”

Dream Ronan nodded, seeming to have been thinking the same. “Alright, I think I know what we can use to grab them. Declan can take Matthew in.”

Declan felt surprised by how much he did not like that idea.

“You just said you were going to take him in,” he pointed out.

Dream Ronan looked surprised too, and also peeved. He waved a hand at what had become of the hallway. “That was before all of this.”

So many times he had jumped on any excuse to get away from the Barns, to get away from whatever dream thing his father or brother had conjured up that night. The alternative of driving his brother to school was an enticingly simple and mundane chore, with fewer risks. It was something many people in Henrietta had most likely done on plenty of occasions. Naturally, it won over chasing bats around the house all morning.

And yet...

“So? I can handle something like this.” The two he already held in his hands chirped louder, cheering him on, so he added, “Easily.”

His dream brother laughed, and not kindly. “Was that you handling it when you ran down the hallway screaming?”

“Alright." Dream Niall stepped forward, seemingly finished with watching his two eldest sons seesaw on the decision of whether or not there was going to be a brawl in his hallway this morning. He motioned for them to come closer. "We've got shit to do and now isn't the time." He pulled a large doubloon from one of his pockets. It was golden but looked tarnished on one side. "Toss it." 

The two brothers stepped forward as their father held his hand out between them, coin resting atop his palm. The other two Lynches had decided to head down the stairs to the kitchen, leaving behind the fate of the coin and returning to much more important matters, like breakfast.

“Ronan, heads. Declan, tails. Whoever wins stays here.”

The three of them watched as he gave it a magnificent flip into the air. It must have been a dream coin because it spun too long near the ceiling for gravity to be a factor. 

Declan frowned at it, fuming. “How come _I’m_ always tails?”

What was wrong with him today? He sounded so whiney. Even when he had been a child he had never spoken like that, no matter how many times he had been tails, which had been always.

After a few seconds, the coin grew tired of its levitating trick and dropped back down, still spinning. As soon as it touched his palm, Dream Niall slapped the coin onto the back of his other hand. It was perfectly centered as he pulled away, revealing the image of two swords crossed together in battle, the tarnished side. Tails up.

Dream Niall used his free hand to slap Declan’s shoulder. “Alright, son, you can be heads.”

_“What!?”_

Even in his dreams, he couldn’t win the coin toss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy St. Mark’s Eve, everybody! With everything that’s going on right now, I hope you all can still find a little bit of enjoyment in today.
> 
> My thoughts and prayers go out to all of you during this time with the global spread of COVID-19. Please stay safe and well to the best of your abilites. <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	7. Simple Pleasures

_“Cabeswater?_ The fucker’s in _Cabeswater!?”_

Neither Blue, Gansey, Adam, nor any of the women at 300 Fox Way said anything as Ronan rose from his seat so fast it skittered backwards. Anyone in his way wordlessly stepped aside, eyes averted, as he went past. A horrendous screech came from the hinges of the kitchen door as he kicked it open, and the sound returned just as unpleasantly as he slammed it shut behind him.

While Adam hurried to follow him outside, the women of Fox Way gathered around the bowl of water on the kitchen island once more. The three psychics of Blue’s family had been called in for this mission, and yet the women had pinpointed Declan’s exact location before they could even finish lighting all the candles. With a simple bowl of water, the missing brother had been found somewhere in the forest of Cabeswater.

“But Cabeswater’s gone,” Blue said. “It’s been gone for over a year now.”

Gansey pressed a thumb to his lips, deep in thought. “He might be in the field where Cabeswater used to be then.”

Maura, one of the psychics peering into the bowl with intrigue, shook her head. “No, Cabeswater’s there. I can feel it.”

Gansey dropped his hand. “What. You can? It’s there?”

He flicked on his glasses so fast that Blue almost missed the little case he had pulled out of his pocket and thought he had manifested the glasses from thin air. He ran over to the bowl and peered inside.

“We can’t see it,” Maura told him, dismissing the fact that even if the psychic women could see it, Gansey still wouldn’t be able to. “But we can feel it. It’s there, except...”

Blue had been looking into the water too, just in case, but now she raised an eyebrow at her mom. “Except?”

“Except it’s not active,” Jimi, the second woman peering into the bowl, said. She sounded confused as she stared at the water, like someone who’s been trying to troubleshoot a computer.

The third psychic on the rescue mission, Calla, kept up a steady tune of tapping with her fingernails on the counter. She looked just as confused, and angry about it. “But it’s powerful, more powerful than it ever was before. It’s like it’s been hooked up to a battery.”

Jimi looked unnerved.“How did we not notice that?”

“I don't know. Without something to focus on it—" Calla tapped the bowl a couple of times. "—I can't feel it at all." 

“Like it’s dormant,” Maura said.

“Or charging,” Calla added.

“And Declan’s in the middle of it.” Gansey put his glasses back in his case. “We need to get there, and quickly. Where’s Ronan and Adam? They still outside?”

Blue couldn’t see out the window over the kitchen sink without climbing the counter, so Gansey accompanied her to the living room to look out the windows there, hoping to see Ronan and Adam walking around the front yard. They didn’t see either of the boys. They didn’t see a 1973 orange Camaro either.

_“They took the Pig!?”_

* * *

Declan froze on his way down the hall, mortified by what he saw in the mirror hanging on the wall. Even when he shooed away the bats clinging to the frame, the image he saw didn’t look any better.

He looked horrendous.

He didn’t even care that a dozen or so tiny nocturnal animals still clung to him. It was what was underneath the animals that deeply upset him. Every inch of fabric had been wrinkled, clear evidence that he had fallen asleep wearing them. His tie looked to have died and now its limp corpse was hanging around his neck like a hunter would wear his latest kill. Any hair products he had used the morning before had long since died in the battle and now his curls spun every which way in victory. 

Adding insult to injury, there was mud. In his hair, on his shirt, there was a smudge of it by his ear. Declan never let himself become covered in something as unsightly as mud. Blood, occasionally, but mud? No, never. 

Except for now, clearly.

His shoes (new shoes, damn it) were caked in it. He had forgotten how many times he had slipped running around the farm with his dream brothers yesterday. The entire time he hadn’t even thought to check a mirror. He imagined going in like this to see Scott, his tailor, and could already hear his screaming.

His family had seen him like this. His entire family.

Hopelessly, he tried to sweep his bangs to the side. It only infuriated the curls further.

He heard a laugh in the hallway. “You look like shit.”

Dream Ronan must have been concerned with his brother's lack of a response because he walked over and smacked him on the back. The movement startled several of the bats away.

“Would you relax? It’s not like you have an interview you’re going to.”

Declan allowed himself to run a hand through his hair. It was a lost cause anyway. “I know.”

“Bro.” Dream Ronan grabbed his shoulder and shook him as he emphasized, “You live on a farm.”

Declan laughed, mostly due to nerves, but still he laughed. “Okay, yeah. You’re right.”

“Go wash up.” He shoved Declan away from the mirror and towards his bedroom. “And loosen up a little. I’m getting stressed just by being near you.”

Declan shook his head but smiled as his dream brother swaggered off, heading in the opposite direction towards his room, maybe to gather his bat hunting supplies, Declan didn’t know.

He went into his own room, planning to ditch and burn the clothes as soon as he got his hands on a match or lighter.

He paused as he passed his bed, staring at all the rumpled blankets, most of them on the floor because Matthew. He bit his lip as the memories came back to him. He remembered staying up late into the night, laughing and swapping stories with his dream brothers until they had all passed out on the same bed. He hadn’t minded at all. Not when Ronan had lied down next to him without asking. Not when Matthew jumped on them with a running start and almost bounced Ronan right off the bed. He hadn't said anything, only cackled as Matthew ducked to avoid the swings of Ronan's vengeance-seeking pillow. 

It brought him back to a time when he had shared a dorm room with Matthew. On the rare occasion when Matthew couldn’t sleep, he would want to crawl into bed with Ronan, but Ronan hadn’t wanted to share a dorm with his brothers. Well, he hadn’t wanted to share a dorm with his older brother. Since then, Matthew had gotten into the habit of crawling into bed with Declan instead. The meager twin bed that Aglionby offered was barely enough to hold up two students over six-foot each, but Declan and Matthew managed. 

He plucked at the cuff of one sleeve, since it was ruined anyway, his thoughts going to uncomfortable topics. He didn't want to think about how much he missed it when Matthew did that. He didn't want to think about how much he wished Ronan would have done that. 

And so, he didn’t. He simply didn’t. He didn’t think about any of that and decided not to look at the bed at all while he grabbed some new clothes. 

He opened his closet door to see what he could work with. His eyes widened.

All of his suits were there, ironed out, finely pressed, and steamed just as he had would have left them. The more expensive side of his attire was tucked away in their suit covers, thick cloth with zippers and only a little square of plastic allowing the suit inside to be seen.

He took a moment to simply appreciate his collection. Almost without his knowledge, his hand reached for a navy one that called to him. 

He carried it to the bathroom in the hall, the one the Lynch brothers had always shared, and like the closet, found all of his supplies waiting for him. He didn't come across them all set up on the counter, hotel-style, but already in places he would have left them. By the way they were all set up, he could have believed he had been living there for...well, as though he had never left. 

His favorite shampoo and conditioner were half full and still had droplets of water on them from the last time the shower had been used. His electric razor was charging in a corner. The lotion he had to specially order, because being Irish meant his skin reacted to everything, sat waiting for him next to the sink. Even his hair gel bottle was nearly empty. He bet if he went downstairs, he’d find _hair gel_ on the shopping list like he would have in his townhouse in D.C.

Everything was so familiar. All he needed now to complete the picture was Ashley walking in and complaining that he had more hair products than she did. 

He set his suit aside and began the process of attempting to shake off all the bats that had chosen his shirt, pants, and hair as comforting resting places. They didn’t even seem all that upset anymore, many of them tilting their heads at him inquisitively. “Don’t mind me!” they seemed to say, “I’m just tagging along! You won’t even notice I’m here.”

It took him several minutes to pry a grand total of three of them from his shirt, each one, he noticed, a different color. One purple, the other two opposing shades of red, like their fur had hidden sequins. He checked to see if they did but found none. They simply glowed like that. He rolled his eyes at his father's Skittles inspired bats and cracked open the door, gently placing them on the floor outside. “You guys go,” he told them, making shooing motions with his hand. “Go bug Ronan.”

Within seconds, they had darted back inside, bringing with them extra friends from the hallway, and landed on him again.

He admitted defeat with a sigh, glaring at the new one that flew up to land on his head. He was starting to wonder if maybe Matthew should skip school today…

Seeing as he could never be seen wearing his current clothes again, he decided to surrender them to the bats. He carefully took them off and left them in a pile outside the door, letting the bats do with them what they will. They all chittered excitedly over the new nesting material and proceeded to bury themselves within the fabric, but several still tried to follow Declan back inside the bathroom. It took him some extra effort to get the ones out of his hair. They clung to his curls desperately, taking some of his hair with them.

Even though his phone wasn’t working, the time still frozen at 10:52 am from yesterday and all services lost, he still placed it on the bathroom counter before stepping into the shower. The spray of water felt the same as he remembered.

He had barely gotten his hair wet when a knock shook him from all the flashbacks.

“Baby?” 

Declan turned off the shower, listening to his dream mother from the other side of the door.

“Do you need any towels?”

Why would she ask that? Wouldn’t she know that he had a whole cabinet full—

“I just pulled these out of the dryer. They’re still warm.”

He jumped out and rushed to the door, opening it just a crack.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, reaching an arm around the door. Soon, he had a cream-colored towel placed into his waiting hand. Instantly, he pulled his arm back into the bathroom and pressed the towel to his face. Good God, it _was_ warm. “I was in such a rush, I completely forgot.”

He smiled as he listened to the musical giggling on the other side of the door. “Yes, I thought you might! You’ve always been quite the rusher. Need anything else?”

He went to say no, but then considered. He had ten minutes to leave the house.

“Could you turn on the coffee pot for me?”

His mom sounded so happy, like she had been hoping he’d ask something like that. “Of course!”

Ten minutes later, Matthew was trudging grudgingly down the porch steps, his Aglionby uniform on the better side of acceptable. Beside him, Declan practically skipped, new navy suit impeccable, his hair still damp, the travel mug his mom had handed him warming his fingers.

“Come on, Matthew!” he sang, reaching the car first. “Don’t want to be late!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I hope you’re all doing okay and that you enjoyed chapter seven today!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	8. Night To Be Alive

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Only the outrageous noise that the Camaro made answered Adam. He held Ronan’s phone in his hands, waiting for the screen to light up with a message from Gansey, a call from Blue, or anything from Declan. The phone did not answer him either.

He sighed.

“Talk to me,” he said, not because he needed to hear something, but because Ronan needed to say something. Whatever was going through his mind was surely not pleasant, and Adam wasn’t going to let those thoughts rip him up.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Talk anyway.”

His grip on the wheel tightened. Adam noticed the hand on the speedometer gradually climbing higher.

“I don’t remember the last time I saw him.”

Adam wished the Camaro, for once in the time he had known it, would drive quietly like a normal vehicle so he could hear how steady—or unsteady—Ronan’s voice was.

“You’re going to have to think harder than that. Last time you saw his face, last time you heard his voice. Tell me.”

“I don’t know!” 

Ronan struck his hand against the wheel. Adam didn’t know if it was accidental or not that he hit the horn, but it blared loud enough for the car in front of them to swerve. A second later, the car’s blinker flipped on and it jumped out of their lane. The volume of the Camaro rose as it sped past it.

Adam lied his head back against the car seat headrest, closing his eyes as he thought. He had been at Harvard University, and Gansey and Blue in Europe, all of them having left around the same time after graduation. Even if he did try to search his own memories for the last time he came across Ronan’s older brother, he had a feeling it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Isn’t his birthday at the beginning of the year?”

Ronan didn't seem to be paying attention to him, or even on the road. His eyes were seeing whatever thoughts were playing in his head, but he managed a half-hearted, “Yeah. January.”

“You see him them?”

No answer, which in itself answered that question enough for Adam.

“Christmas?” he asked next. “Even if it’s just a text message, or if you saw that car of his at church. That counts.”

Again, no answer.

“Keep going back,” he pressed. “I don’t care how far back it is, you just have to get somewhere.”

The Camaro ate up another mile before Ronan spoke again.

“I think it was Thanksgiving or something. He always uses the holidays to check school reports and scores and shit.” His brows pulled together, his expression pained as he pieced together what must have been a foggy memory at best. “He wouldn’t stop texting me about Matthew’s grades. He finally just came over to yell at me.”

“About the grades?”

“About how I dropped out. Said if Matthew did too, it’d be my fault.”

They had come to a stop for a red light. Adam had no doubt that if there hadn't already been cars stopping in front of them, Ronan would have ran it. Adam decided that was another good reason to keep talking. He could already see Ronan considering driving around the cars via the sidewalk. 

“How bad was the fight?” Adam had more than one memory of convincing a store owner not to call the police when the Lynch brothers had been swinging punches in a dark parking lot. He’d seem the damage, the black eyes and swollen lips, on both of them.

“I don’t know. I just ignored him until he threw the papers at me and left.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” He watched as the light turned green and the cars started moving again. Within minutes the Camaro had swerved around them all. “You guys have had way worse fights than that.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, then I’m going to let you know right now, you suck at it.”

“That’s because I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m trying to figure out what made him go off the radar.” Adam looked back down at the phone. The notification screen remained blank and messageless. “Because no matter how bad you guys fight, he never just leaves like that. He always comes back, even when we tell him not to.”

“Tell him _what?”_

Adam braced his hands against the dashboard as Ronan hit the brakes, the number on the speedometer plummeting from a good portion over the speed limit down to zero. He trusted Ronan, trusted that he wouldn’t let anything so much as scrape the vehicle, both out of the pride he had as a driver, and the fact that Gansey would kill him. Still, he imagined all the drivers they had just sped up to get in front of must have all had heart attacks in sync. He cringed at the pandemonium of honking that swept by them as Ronan pulled over next to the sidewalk. 

Ronan turned in his seat to face him. “Who the hell told him that?”

Adam took a moment to wonder about the condition of the Pig’s engine after that sudden stop and if he was going to have to fix that, and to think about what he was going to say next. “We all did. Me, you, Gansey. Blue sometimes, I guess.”

“Since when?”

“For as long as I've known you and Gansey." Adam remembered those days when he had gotten to know on a more personal level who Ronan's older brother was. He did not remember those days fondly. "Gansey had to make sure he stayed away, and when Gansey wasn't there, I had to. If we didn't, things went to hell." 

Ronan turned to face the road again, but what he was staring at, Adam wasn’t sure. “But I never told him that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Adam noticed the seatbelt still lying in wait on the side of his seat and decided today was a good day not to forget that. As he pulled it across his chest and clicked it into place, he said, “Everyone knows you guys don’t get along. It’s not like it’s some secret.”

He didn’t like how quiet Ronan had become.

“He always gave us trouble,” he reminded him. “It’s not our fault he’d never listen.”

Because Declan Lynch never listened. He remembered the night Declan had come marching up to the door of Monmouth Manufacturing, demanding to see his brother, already pissed off before any interaction had even happened. Gansey hadn’t been in town that night, leaving it up to Adam to keep the peace. Declan, a man of wealth and over six-feet tall, had looked about ready to pick up Adam and toss him aside to get into the building.

It never mattered what he would say to him. It only mattered what Gansey said because Gansey knew how to take care of Ronan where Declan did not.

Sometimes Adam had to wonder if Declan was always in some state of being pissed off at Ronan, because he couldn’t recall a single time that the eldest of the Lynch brothers hadn’t been.

“It was his choice to act the way he did.”

* * *

Something Declan never wanted to hear his brother say to him after stepping into the foyer, watching as his brother rushed over with a broomstick in hand, was, “Careful, the big ones bite.”

For God’s sake, he hadn’t even shut the front door yet.

He took ahold of his mental danger meter and dialed it up to eleven before he asked, expression, he was sure, very critical, “What bites?”

Dream Ronan opened his mouth to speak, but something else answered from the living room and echoed down the hall to the two of them. The noise sounded nothing of songbirds and everything of what lurked in the realms of hell.

Dream Ronan raised his broomstick higher. "Here it comes." 

Dialed to twelve now. “Here comes wh—”

A large, black mass shot into the hallway and rocketed straight towards them both, screaming. It was much larger than the tiny black creatures Declan had become happily acquainted with and sounded nothing like them either. He didn't bother putting up a fight with that thing rushing his way and dropped to the floor, letting Ronan take the lead, batter up and swing. The broom flew over Declan's head as it made contact with the creature. 

Declan scrambled back and snatched onto one of his dream brother’s legs as the horrific thing hit the floor _waaaay_ too close for his comfort. Declan needed that thing to be, at the very least, a hundred feet away from him for him to feel comfortable. The thing must have been on its back as it squirmed around, wings and claws pawing at the air until it managed to flip itself over. 

Another bat, Declan realized. A bat out of _hell._

It crouched on Declan's nice wooden floors in a creepy impersonation of a spider, a creature the size of a large cat. It's near-flat face hissed and spat at him. 

“Christ!” He used Dream Ronan to claw back up to his feet. By the expression on Dream Ronan’s face, he did not appreciate it. “Why the hell would Dad dream that?”

“He took out all the aggression in the small ones and put it into these ugly fuckers.” His dream brother jabbed the broom in the direction of the bat. He didn’t flinch when the bat mimicked the jab back at him. Declan wished he could have said that he didn’t flinch either. “I guess he wanted to use them as pest control or something, but then they started killing all the little ones...”

A brief memory of a chirping, yellow-glowing creature came to Declan’s mind, and he felt his heart sink. “We have to separate them then." 

“What do you think we’ve been doing for the last hour? We can’t do shit about the glow stick ones until we round up all of these and take them to Cabeswater.”

“But I thought we were already in Cabeswater?”

“I meant the forest, Declan!”

“Well, damn, Ronan!” he snapped back, a little hurt. “Forgive my ass for not understanding! You’re the one who’s been preaching to me from the beginning, ‘everything around you is Cabeswater, Declan. Your house, your family, the air you breathe, _everything is Cabeswater._ You see that car over there? _Cabeswater._ Your girlfriend? _Also Cabeswater._ The answer to the universe—”

Dream Ronan smacked him with the broom handle.

The movement spurred on the giant bat, unlocking some sort of instinct to engage. It stood on its legs and began flapping its wings. Declan had never watched much of Animal Planet as a child, but he knew enough to guess that the creature was about to attack.

“You waiting for it to say _en garde_ or something?” Seeing as his dream brother was the only one with a mean to defend himself at the moment, Declan felt no shame in moving behind him. “Kill it already!”

“Dad said he didn’t want us to kill them,” his dream brother said, never taking his eyes off the animal. "You know he doesn't like destroying the things he makes."

“Fuck that! Kill it!”

Dream Ronan raised the broom again. “You tell Dad this was an accident.”

Declan was making smacking motions with his hand. The air on the back of his neck was standing as he watched the animal jump from side to side in what he guessed must have been a threat display. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just go ahead—HIT IT!”

The bat shot into the air, heading for their faces, or maybe their jugulars if they were thinking from an animal’s standpoint. Dream Ronan struck it again and the bat hit the floor once more, but this time, with the bristles of the broom held firmly in its mouth. It locked eyes with the boys and started growling.

The brothers blinked.

Dialed to thirteen now.

“Nice,” Declan hissed at his brother.

“What have you done since you walked in here?” his dream brother hissed back. “Name one thing.”

Then, the bat gave a mighty tug and pulled the broom out of Dream Ronan’s grasp. It clattered to the floor behind it.

Dialed to fourteen.

“Shit,” Dream Ronan said.

Declan was already imagining bite marks and stitches and rabies shots. “Maybe” he whispered, “If we don’t move—”

The animal screamed and charged them.

Fifty.

The boys screamed and fled down the hallway.

The rest of the day continued in that pattern. While Dream Aurora was given the "incredibly" important task of staying in one room and comforting the little bats they had managed to corral in there, Declan went through the hours of the day chasing (and being chased) by the little bats' hellish cousins. They always had weird supplies on hand, such as dog and cat carriers, but when they ran out of those they used whatever they could find. Potato sacks, trash bins, cardboard boxes with holes punctured in it and lots and lots of duct tape on top. 

It was so hectic in the Lynch family household that Declan could hear In The Hall of the Mountain King playing to the beat of everyone’s running and yelling.

They had pulled up beside Aglionby Academy at the end of the day to pick up Matthew, and if they hadn’t been so tired Declan and Ronan would have strangled him when he had started laughing.

“Wow, those little things gave you this much trouble?” He had asked when he’d seen their bedraggled appearances. He slipped into the back seat of the Volvo with a big grin on his face, too distracted by the papers falling out of his backpack to see the expressions of rage taking over his two older brothers’ faces. “Told you, you should have let me skip school today!”

Declan had wordlessly reached an arm out in case Ronan attempted to claw at him from the passenger’s seat.

With his mind moving rapid-fire throughout the day, he hadn't noticed the shadows in the house growing longer and longer. It wasn’t until he was walking out of the house with his family, lugging along two large dog carriers, that he noticed that he couldn't see the sun anymore. Dwindling rays of light only showed in the farthermost corner of the sky, quickly becoming overcome with hues of purple and blue. He tilted his head back, squinting to see the first few stars filling the space above.

Along with the lower amounts of light, came lower amounts of temperature as he noticed that the next breeze felt decidedly brisker. He set the carriers down on the grass and zipped up his coat, wishing he had brought a scarf. 

He snorted as Dream Aurora surprised him from behind and wrapped one around his neck.

“Thanks, Mom,” he mumbled into the fabric.

Several trips in and out of the house went by before they eventually had all the carriers, and makeshift carriers, outside. They sat them down in the grass close to the beginnings of the woods that surrounded the property. The sounds of light chittering and rustling could be heard coming from within. The cages of the giant, evil bats still lied back within the house, in a heavily locked room, waiting for tomorrow’s trip to Cabeswater.

Even though according to Dream Ronan, they were already in Cabeswater. But what did Declan know? At this point, he had given up trying to make sense of anything and decided to go along with what Dream Ronan said to stay safe.

He had expected there to be a flurry of little iridescent creatures to fill the darkening sky as soon as everyone swung open the cage doors with flourish, but nothing happened. They all waited a few beats, wondering if maybe they would all trickle out one by one as they realized what awaited for them beyond the cage. That didn't happen either. 

Declan rounded the cage and knelt in front of it, having to lean over to where his hair touched the grass to be able to see inside. A bunch of little eyes blinked at him curiously. Not a single one appeared to be in any hurry.

“I think you made them a little too docile, Dad,” he said. He tried tapping the floor of the cage by the entrance. The animals looked intrigued by the tapping, but he didn’t think they got the message.

“Does that mean we get to keep them?”

“No, Matthew,” his father said. “They’ll be much happier out here.”

With the damp grass, his pant legs were quickly soaked, having to plant his knees down to reach inside the carrier. He heard a mixture of startled and happy chirps as he gently felt around to grab one. His fingers carefully inclosed one that turned out to be a pleasant purple color. It pecked at his hand, but he didn’t even the sharp bite of teeth. He stood up, stroking its head with the back of his index finger as he walked closer to one of the trees. He opened up his hand and, for a moment, the bat only sat there staring up at him. He held up his hand a little higher. The bat stretched out its wings, then tucked them. Stretched them out again, then tucked. On the third try, she dashed upwards. Declan could see her flying through the darkness until he blinked, and then she was gone.

The company with him cheered.

“Well done, baby,” Aurora said with a clap of her hands.

Luckily it was too dark for either of his dream brothers to notice his blushing. “They just needed a little nudge, Mom. No big deal.”

“My turn!”

“Remember to be careful, Matthew,” he warned, thinking of how small the creatures were. “Don’t hold them too tightly.”

"I know, I know." The youngest Lynch used both his hands to show how careful he was being, grinning widely at the little creature that stared up at him a moment later. "I got a green one!”

Dream Ronan snorted. “What do you think this is, egg hunting on Easter?” 

Declan pulled out another and promptly laughed. “Hey, mine’s green too!”

“Oh, I got a lovely little pink one!”

“I got red,” their dream father said. “I didn’t even know they came in red.”

His wife leaned over to take a peek. “Niall, my dear, I think that one’s pink too.”

“No. It’s red.”

Even in the fading light, Declan could make out the look of betrayal on Dream Ronan's face. He laughed and walked over as his dream brother reached into his own cage, grumbling to himself. He leaned over to watch.

“What color did you get?”

He got a huff for a response.

“Come on, bro,” he pleaded. He worked hard to block out any signs of teasing from his voice. “Can you at least show me?”

With a sigh, his dream brother caved. He pulled out one of the bats and held it up a little higher for the older Lynch to see. Blue.

“She’s a pretty one,” he said, and the bat was. The vibrant blue hue glistened on the bat’s fur, looking radioactive and enchanting in the dark.

Matthew bounced over as eagerly as ever, but a little more slowly now as he made sure not to jostle his own little nocturnal animal. He only looked up once he reached them and came to a stop. “What’d you get, Ronan?”

He held up the bat again. “Blue.”

“Alright, boys!” their father boomed from several yards away. “It’s fucking cold out and none of these little shits are going anywhere on their own.”

It was true. The three brothers surveyed the collection of cages in the field. Not a single bat had dared venture out on its own yet.

“So let’s get a move on.” With that, Dream Niall and Dream Aurora lifted their hands up, and within seconds the two pinks bats, one a shade darker than the other, fluttered up and seemingly vanished in the space above.

Dream Ronan rose to his feet and walked further out into the field, and for a reason that Declan couldn't understand, he and Dream Matthew followed him without question. The middle brother of the Lynches didn't seem to mind and grinned at the two of them once they all came to stop in a circle. 

Without a word, they all extended their arms out, slowing unfurling their hands to reveal the little creatures tucked inside. The bats blinked and fluffed themselves out. The one in the youngest Lynch's palm sniffed the air curiously. 

Then the one in Dream Ronan's hands took off, launching into the sky in a rocket-like fashion. Inspired, the other two followed after it within the same second. Declan refused to blink, his focus locked on the bats before they would all inevitably blend into the darkness. His dream brothers must have had the same thoughts, as all their eyes stayed trained on the sky, determined to watch for as long as they could. It helped that all three of them stayed in the same line of sight, flying closely together. Privately, Declan thought that the two green ones were following the path of the third. At least, that’s what it looked like to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I hope you enjoyed chapter eight today and that you’re all doing well!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	9. Open Up Your Eyes

The Pig had gotten them all the way to the road running alongside the fields before it broke down. Adam had gotten started on fixing it while Ronan had gotten started on walking it. He couldn’t wait in any one place, he had to keep moving.

Graciously, Adam hadn’t said anything when the Camaro had started showing signs of breaking down. After two hours to D.C. and two hours back, the BMW had needed a stop by the gas station and Ronan simply didn’t have time for that. He didn’t have time for Gansey’s goddamn vintage vehicle to start throwing a tantrum either.

He didn’t know how much time he had.

Maybe none.

Maybe it was too late.

Maybe he was going to another funeral.

He suddenly realized that for their parents, Declan had taken care of everything. He had spoken to the lawyers, had discussed the details of their father’s will, arranged both of their funerals, but should something happen to Declan...

Ronan stopped walking, just long enough for his vision to clear.

Twenty minutes on the trek had passed when he picked up on the rumble of a car behind him. It was too quiet for the Camaro but too loud for his BMW. When he looked back he found the Fox Way Ford in the distance, hurrying towards him determinedly. It slowed as it came closer and halted beside him like a loyal, several-thousand-pound metal horse. He heard the sound of the locking mechanism clicking off before the vehicle had completely stilled from the momentum. He opened the door to the backseat, finding Adam there waiting for him. Adam shifted over to the other side to make room as he climbed inside.

In the driver's seat, Blue gripped the wheel with an expression like she was about to ride into battle, her eyes having not strayed from the road. She simply acknowledged Ronan's joining of her hunting party with a stiff nod at the rearview mirror. Beside her, Gansey sat with his arms crossed, also not looking at Ronan, but for an entirely different reason. 

“You took,” he said, making a slicing motion with his hand as he then said, “the Pig.”

“It was important,” was all Ronan had to say. He had expected Blue to hit the gas pedal as soon as he shut the door behind him, but she didn’t. He wanted to shout at her to get moving but stopped himself at the last second. The look in her eyes said that she wanted to get moving too. Already her fingers twitched to put the car into drive, but she was forcing herself to remain still. Gansey held still. Adam held still.

Ronan moved his sights to whatever was outside the window before any of them started talking to him.

"I know," Gansey said, then sighed. He sounded regretful, and the horrible part was, Ronan didn't think it had anything to do with the Pig. Gansey turned around in his seat to look at him, even though Ronan didn’t move his gaze from the window. “This is important, which is exactly why it’s so important for us to do this together. We don’t know what we’ll find out there, Ronan. We don’t want you going alone.”

They didn’t want him going alone because they were afraid of what he’ll find, was what Ronan knew he meant to say.

He felt a hand on his wrist and looked over at Adam. He was still sweaty from his attempts to fix the Pig’s engine, despite the cool April weather. 

“Your brother’s a tough guy. Even if he is in trouble, he can hold off whatever it is until we get there.” He wasn’t straightening out his Henrietta accent like he usually did, maybe realizing that now wasn’t the time for that, or maybe trying to give Ronan one of the few comforts he could get right now.

“And then whatever’s giving him trouble, we’ll kick its ass,” Blue said, a good few decibels louder than the other passengers in the van. So many times she had driven the Ford with the caution of someone handling an explosive device, but now she had seemingly thrown all that caution out the driver’s side window. The severity of the mission at hand must have required all fear over driving to be shoved aside for the time being, as her expression told that she could drive full throttle down the hills ahead with zero hesitation.

Gansey, particularly, did not look happy about that expression but decided not to say anything about it. At least, not right now.

“We’ll find him,” he promised Ronan. “We know where he is now, so that’s the first step. Blue.” He turned to her. “Get us there.”

He realized belatedly that he should have said that with less conviction, as she had absolutely no issues doing that. Thankfully, there were no other drivers in sight of the long, winding road, so the boys could try to relax as all their backs hit their respective seats as she finally put her foot to the gas pedal. 

Minutes later, fewer minutes with Blue's driving, they crested a hill and saw, on one side of the road, an endless scene of dark green trees. 

It was in the same spot they remembered where it used to be. It had been over a year since they had seen that forest, a forest that looked no different than any other one in Virginia, but they all knew was like no other place on Earth. They all grinned at each other like mad. 

“It’s back,” Gansey said. None of the others seemed capable of speaking, but he knew they must have all been echoing his same thoughts in their heads.

Cabeswater was back.

The fields that had been flanking them since they had gotten on the simple two-way road had created a sort of golden shore to the dark green sea of the forest. The Ford slowed as Blue drove it off of the asphalt and began making a way through those fields, jostling its passengers with the uneven ground. None of them minded as their eyes stayed glued to the outline of trees and shrubbery that marked the beginnings of marvelous Cabeswater. They drove around a small line of trees and the Ford jerked to a stop.

Gansey made a noise as his seatbelt yanked him back into his seat. He hissed as he rubbed his chest, betting a bruise would form by that evening. “Blue?” he asked, startled.

She pressed a palm to her mouth. “Oh no,” she said around it.

Ronan turned his head with the other boys to see what had gotten her attention. He stopped thinking, he just jumped out of the vehicle. He didn’t even process that he had kicked open the door, scrambled out, and rounded the other side. Several yards away from the Ford, another vehicle sat in the fields with them, parked in the shade of the few trees it was hidden behind.

He ran halfway to it and stopped. He wanted to get closer to it, but at the same time, he really didn’t.

Declan’s sleek, silver Volvo was covered in a thick mixture of dust and pollen. Leaves and parts of branches had gotten lodged in the wheels and behind the rearview mirrors. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in months.

* * *

Declan’s eyebrows pinched together as bright light warmed his face. It was so intense that instead of seeing black behind his eyelids, he saw red. He raised a hand to shield his eyes before beginning to squint them open. Above, a blue sky greeted him.

He sat up so quickly his sight blacked out for several seconds. He scrubbed his face, forcing himself into a more coherent state. When he lowered his hands, he found an endless yellow field surrounding him.

Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet and turned in a circle. Fields, fields, fields…more fields…

A single road he recognized…

His car.

“Ronan?” he asked quietly, fully expecting to hear a voice answer him. He waited for his dream brother to pop up behind him, to stand from the grass, to honk the horn from Declan’s car. Maybe his brother had created a dream thing that had turned him invisible and was currently waiting for the perfect moment to scare the crap out of him. That wouldn’t have surprised Declan at all, but as he stood there, still and silent, he did not believe any of that was going to happen. He felt too alone.

There wasn’t a tree in sight. Even the trees he had pulled his car around to block it from any drivers on the road had vanished. Trees, he realized, that belonged to Cabeswater.

Panic swelled in his chest. 

“Ronan?” he asked again, this time louder, and then he simply started shouting. He wasn’t going to get an answer, he knew that, but he tried anyway. He didn’t know what else to do. “Ronan!”

Cabeswater was gone.

Breathing heavily, he searched his pockets for his phone. He then realized, shocked, that he was wearing the same outfit he had come to the forest in. Not his pristine navy suit, not his nightclothes that he distinctly remembered putting on the night before. He couldn’t understand it. He remembered the feel of his silk nightclothes, the drumming of hot water from the shower, the sharp taste of mint in his mouth as he brushed his teeth, the sound of the hairdryer filling his ears as he brushed his hair, the tinge of embarrassment he felt when Dream Ronan had made fun of him for it, the joy he felt when he had chased Ronan down the hallway with the cologne he hated. It had all been too real to be something he had merely imagined, especially for him. Declan was not a man of imagination. Even on drugs, he doubted he would ever be able to dream of something that vivid and so lucid. 

As he pulled his phone and then his keys from his pockets, he noticed one particular object was missing. He had everything he had come to the forest with on him, except his compass. That was the biggest comfort he had ever felt. 

So it had been real. All of it.

Of course, he could try to debunk it, try to find holes in the logic, but he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to be rational, he wanted to believe it had been real. Even more real than he knew it was, like what had happened hadn't happened because of a magical forest. 

His family home. His home. The cars with tarps over them in the driveway, a plum tree he didn’t feel any guilt eating from, and the animals that filled the property. Glow-in-the-dark bats that sounded like birds and liked his hair. His mom, his dad, his brothers. Ronan talking to him. He wanted it to be real.

But was it real anymore, if it was gone? 

Would it be real again, if he could get it back?

He tried to turn on his phone, but it flashed an image of a low red battery at him before stubbornly going blank again. In a daze, he trekked back to his car and unlocked it. It beeped at him in greeting the same way his dream car had, exactly the same way. He dug the keys into the ignition and turned it. He fished his charger from the glove department and plugged in his phone, cranking the A/C up despite the fact that he could see his breath as he waited for the device to power up. There was nothing he could do while he waited, except stare out at the endless field, where a forest used to be, wondering what had happened.

He wondered where Dream Ronan was right now. He wondered if he was alright.

This was an imaginary hell for him, wreaking havoc on his mind. He might as well already be separated from his actual family. Now he was for his dream one too. The real Ronan didn't want to see him, and now he couldn't even see his Dream Ronan. A double hell. 

Finally, the screen of his phone lit up.

_9:08 am_  
_Saturday, December 9, 2017_

He had been in Cabeswater for two days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, the tension is amping up! I hope you all enjoyed chapter nine today! I was so eager to post this one! I wanted to have it up by yesterday so badly, but I came down with a migraine. Mostly, the patience I had to have to wait another day hurt more than my head did. I’m all better today though! And super happy to finally have this chapter up, since it’s beginning to show the direction of what will be happening.
> 
> I didn’t think it would take this long to get to this part, but I didn’t want anything to feel rushed. Nothing worse than a rushed story, even though I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming chapters. I’m super excited for those, and I hope you all find it just as exciting as I do!
> 
> Heads up though! I like to keep the chapters short and sweet, but the next one is going to be a tad longer than I usually try to go for. It's actually a chapter I knew this story would have from the very beginning, so I really hope it's as good as I'm envisioning it. Do let me know if it is or isn't! Critique is always welcome!
> 
> Well wishes to all of you and please stay safe! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	10. Sacrifice

Ronan clutched at his throat. He felt like he was going to scream.

Since Blue had broken the news that morning, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his dad, his mom, and how they had looked when he had found them.

Now, his mind gave an abrupt switch to his friend Noah. He had known Noah's ghost, not his body, because his friend had been long dead inside Cabeswater. He had died in Cabeswater, been murdered in Cabeswater, had decayed away until he was a skeleton in Cabeswater.

Cabeswater, where the psychics had located Declan.

Not long after they had discovered the site where Noah had died, they had found his bright red car decaying as he had been not far away. Long abandoned and long forgotten, not unlike what was beginning to happen to the Volvo Ronan was staring at, covered in several weeks’ worth of yellow pollen.

Things were clicking together a little too fast now. In both cases, they had just _assumed_ that Noah and Declan were fine. Always fine. Until they weren’t. Until they found out that Noah had been dead for seven years and Declan had been missing for several months.

It was like a sick, twisted game. Would he find his brother like he had found his dad, his mom, or Noah?

“Ronan, sit down,” Gansey told him in a voice that meant _now._ Even if Gansey hadn’t said anything, Ronan wasn’t sure he would have had a choice. Even as he lowered himself to the ground, he couldn’t feet the dirt beneath his hands or Adam’s fingers holding onto his arms, even though he knew they were there. He hung his head and allowed his eyes to fall shut, taking deep inhales until the dizziness started to fade.

Vaguely, he noticed Adam’s hands switching out for Gansey’s.

“Blue, you have water bottles in the trunk, don’t you? Go get them. Adam, see if you can get that car open.”

Ronan imagined he must have looked pretty bad for Blue not to argue over being ordered around like that.

“I’m a mechanic, Gansey. Not a professional carjacker.”

Apparently not bad enough to keep Adam from arguing, though.

“Then figure it out,” Gansey told him in a way that suggested that Adam should already know this. “Break the window if you have to.”

Adam must have been planning to say something else, for when he said, “Wait,” it sounded as though it had interrupted his train of thought as well as everyone else’s.

Ronan lifted his head from his hands to look at him. Adam’s focus was directed towards the forest, all attention of the Volvo discarded from his thoughts.

They all fell quiet, waiting, resisting the urge to say, “What is it?” None of them wanted to break his concentration. He may not have been as experienced as the women of 300 Fox Way, but as the unofficial psychic of the group, they all regarded him just as seriously. It took him longer than it would have for the Fox Way women to hone in on whatever he had noticed, longer still to decipher what it was, but he knew Cabeswater better than any other psychic. 

He also knew Declan better than any other psychic.

That wasn’t saying much, but all the people who knew Declan Lynch the best were standing in that field. Again, that wasn’t saying much, but none of them could afford to be picky.

“There you are,” Adam then said, so quietly and so much to himself that the others wondered if he knew that he had spoken out loud. Before any of them could inquire, he spun to them, said, “I got him. This way!” and took off.

* * *

Very few souls were driving on the roads, making it easy for Declan to drive back to Henrietta. For two weeks he had bided his time in D.C, waiting for one of his machines to pick up on Cabeswater again. He tapped his phone, taking a brief glimpse at the screen as it lit back up.

_9:54 am_   
_Saturday, December 23, 2017_

Not only was it the day before Sunday, it was the day before Christmas Eve. Tomorrow, he was supposed to go to St. Agnes church with his brothers. It would be a big event, lasting much longer than the usual church Sunday.

He frowned at his phone, then returned his eyes to the road ahead. He knew his phone would not be lighting up with a “Merry Christmas” under Ronan’s contact tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow. He wasn’t all too certain if Ronan would even say it to him in person when Declan saw him in church. If he saw him in church. Ronan would show up tomorrow, wouldn’t he? Of course he would. Declan couldn’t imagine Ronan going to that extreme of a length, to skip church on Sunday _and_ Christmas Eve, just to avoid his older brother.

Then again, Declan couldn’t imagine a lot of things.

But what if it was _Declan_ who didn’t show up tomorrow? If he was the one, for a change, who gave no warning and simply didn’t show?

He sighed as he thought about it, eyeing himself in the rearview mirror. Come on, he knew what would happen. Ronan would be ecstatic. 

Well, what about Matthew? He would surely notice. He would be so upset if he arrived at the church tomorrow, wearing too much cologne like he always did, maybe even more so because it was a holiday, and only saw one of his brothers there waiting for him.

Wouldn’t he?

Declan drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. Maybe he didn’t know his brothers as well as he thought he did.

He knew one place, though, where both his brothers would miss him at Christmas. 

His eyes lit up when his car crested a hill. The full view of a vast, green forest lied out before him, outlined by gorgeous golden fields. He almost felt stupid at how excited he felt when so many times before the idea of the place made him feel nausea. Now it bestowed upon him the opposite effect, relieving a pain he hadn’t realized he had been carrying until it dissipated just then. He blinked as he noticed the number on the speedometer climbing higher and higher and reprimanded himself to keep to the speed limit. Then thought, screw it, and gunned it into the fields. 

He hid the Volvo behind that same line of trees, more out of cautionary habit than actual concern, and jumped out, just barely remembering to hit the lock button on his keys. There was no hesitation this time when he crossed the fields and raced into the forest.

“Mom!”

As soon as the forest’s shadows fell across him, he started shouting.

“Dad!”

He wondered how far he would have to travel. He didn’t care if it was far, but he also had no sense of direction. Last time he had just sort of stumbled into a world made of everything he pretended he didn’t wish for. As much as he would have appreciated it, there was no gate, no road, no sign with a giant arrow pointing in a direction and saying, “THAT WAY.” Just a seemingly endless forest filled with impossible things.

“Matthew!”

He slowed only out of fear for rolling an ankle or tumbling down an incline. He searched wildly, but despite knowing better, the woods looked like any other one he would find himself in Virginia.

“Ronan!”

 _Please,_ he prayed. _If I can only have one, please...let it be him._

He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “Ronan!”

 _Visitor! Visitor!_ The trees sang.

He skidded to a stop, more out of breath than he had expected. He was a fit man, he went to the gym, he jogged when he had the time. How long had he been running and shouting? One side of him felt convinced that he had run into the forest only a few minutes before, and that merely the anticipation was making him breathless. Another side of him, the side with a stitch in it, insisted that he had been going in circles for hours. He couldn't figure out which one was the truth, but did it matter? It wasn't as though anyone was going to come looking for him. 

He tilted his head back to stare at the canopy above, still uncertain of which of the trees around him were the ones speaking Latin to him. Perhaps all of them.

_Have you come to stay?_

_Have you come to be our sacrifice?_

Again with the sacrifice thing. He groaned audibly, half exasperation and the other half...just pure exasperation. He went to inform the trees that, no, that he didn’t attend a high-end university so he could put down “willing sacrifice” in his portfolio, but then paused. He gave another quick scan of the woods, seeing the trees but not any faces of the people he was looking for.

He took some time to regain his breath before he put his hands on his hips, waved a hand at the woods and asked, “Why’d you disappear?”

_We do not always have the strength for you to see us, Visitor._

_We will continue to return, until we can no longer._

“Until you can no longer,” he echoed. He felt the familiar pull of concern in his chest. “You’re saying...there’ll be a time when you can’t come back?”

The trees sounded apologetic and regretful as they spoke to him.

_Each season, we grow weaker._

_Come summer, we will be gone._

There was once a time when he would have celebrated that news. Now he only felt dread.

“Is that why you need a sacrifice?” he asked, eyes on the leaves above for lack of anywhere else to look. “So you can stay?”

_We need a sacrifice to survive._

_In return, our sacrifice shall thrive among us._

_Any dream you desire, you will dream forever._

“Does that mean...” He wrung his hands, afraid to say it, rather afraid to want it to begin with. The only reason he continued, was because he was afraid to lose it again. “I’ll get to stay with Ronan?”

_Is that your dream, Visitor?_

Declan knew the answer to that one. He had been quizzed on it enough the last time he had been in the forest. “Yes…Yes, it is.”

_Your dream will be yours._

_Your dream will be all you know._

It sounded so tantalizingly simple. Was it really? He stepped into a forest, agreed to its terms and conditions, and in return he got...everything he had ever wanted?

Without his permission, thoughts began filling his head, but surprisingly, they weren't terrible. Normally when that happened, he saw every goddamn worst-case scenario flash before his eyes, warning him of consequences to come should he make the wrong decision. 

He didn’t see that this time. This time, he saw barns and sheds of all sizes, gardens and haystacks and cows on bright green hills. He heard a lone raven’s cry from the rooftop of the largest structure, of the mansion. Beds of flowers surrounded all of its sides, the smell of something baking coming from inside. He saw the driveway in the front and could imagine his Volvo parked there, right next to a BMW.

The logical side of him always had something to say about what he was about to do, some horrible outcome that could happen. For the first time he could remember, that logical side of him was silent.

Maybe because the worst-case scenario here was death, and Declan could handle death. 

Death was an easy price to pay for love.

He thought he would have felt regret as he asked, “What do I need to do?” but he didn’t. Not even a little.

Suddenly, it was far too bright. Could Cabeswater control the weather? With the experience he’s had with the forest at this point, he should have known better. Any question that began with “Could Cabeswater…?” was an automatic _yes._ Yes, Cabeswater could.

The wind weaved through the trees and pushed against his back a little more strongly than any of the winds the weatherman had predicted for that morning. Declan reminded himself not to fight it and began taking careful steps in the direction he was being pushed towards, one hand up to guard his eyes against the light. 

He hadn’t gone far when the wind stopped. He lowered his hand and blinked, finding the source of the brightness pouring in from a gap in the branches above him. Below, the light warmed a small, circular clearing of grass too green for the beginning of winter.

Without the wind’s help, he stepped further into the sunlight, closer to the center of the clearing. The little patch of grass felt...different from the rest of the forest. More important. He felt a little more important simply standing in it. 

He frowned, certain that Ronan and his friends could have understood all this better than he could. He bet they could walk in, snap their fingers, and explain away everything that was happening better than a PowerPoint presentation. 

He returned his gaze to the trees again, lost. “What now?”

_To grant your dreams, we must have some way to reach you._

_You must connect yourself to us._

“Right...” Declan said, as though that made plenty of sense to him. “And how would I go about doing that?”

_Blood will do._

“Ah-ha!” He pointed at one cluster of trees as though he had caught them in the act of some heinous crime. “I knew there would be some satanic part of this.”

The trees laughed merrily at him, as though they found him adorable and entertaining. Declan had, to some extent, meant what he said, but he supposed it would be fruitless to argue against a bunch of trees.

He gave a little glare up at the branches hanging above his head, but still he flicked out his pocket knife. He pulled up his sleeve and angled the tip of the blade against his forearm. He thought of his family and didn’t even hesitate. 

Bright red appeared and already began trickling down to his elbow. He sucked in a breath, refusing to make so much as a grunt or a hiss as pain bloomed in his arm. He felt proud of himself as he dragged the blade a little bit, watching the stream pick up into a steady pace and splitting off like channels of tiny red rivers. 

A little bit from his arm would surely suffice. He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over losing some of the blood he woke up with this morning. Even the mark it would leave behind, as he dragged it from near his wrist all the way to the crook of his elbow, didn’t bother him. It would heal a lot faster than his heart would if he left the forest today by himself. 

He was wondering how much more he would need when the blood began dripping from arm. He didn’t see when one of the drops touched the ground. 

He felt it.

The knife fell from his hand and landed in the grass at his feet.

Energy surged through him like adrenaline had skipped past the needle and just instantly manifested in his veins. He pressed his now knifeless hand against his neck and felt his pulse going wild. It didn’t hurt. In fact, his cut didn’t even hurt anymore. There was too much adrenaline coursing up and down his arm to let him feel the pain, even as blood still seeped down his arm and dripped from his fingers. 

_Visitor._

The trees, although unable to hide their eagerness, had left their singing behind.

_You have come to us in our time of need._

_You have so selflessly offered to save us._

_We thank you._

Once more Declan returned his attention to the foliage, temporarily forgetting the shakiness in his body and the buzz in his ears as he said, “You’re welcome.”

_In return for your graciousness, we offer you all that we are._

_And promise to fulfill your every dream._

_Do you accept this?_

A raspy laugh played in his head, followed by sharp blue eyes and an even sharper smile. Declan smiled too, feeling a little burst of happiness. “Yes,” he said.

_Then you must give to us a sacrifice._

He furrowed his brows and wondered if the assortment of trees around him could see the confused look on his face. “You mean, myself?”

_No, dear Visitor._

_You must sacrifice that which is a sacrifice to you._

Riddles and riddles. Things just couldn’t be simple. He sighed. “So, then...something important?”

Something important? He felt so lost. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he had to offer up that could be dubbed important to a forest of dreams and Latin speaking trees. He himself couldn’t dub anything he owned to be of such importance to think worthy of a sacrifice. He made a quick mental list of his inventory, scanned it, and came up short. Nothing he could call his was truly that important to him. He loved his suits, his Volvo, his high scores and his university. Those were all possessions he would be heartbroken to lose, but not enough to mourn.

All the while he was trying to think of this while feeling like he had been hooked up to a generator. His hands trembled as though he had consumed energy drinks and full pots of dark roast coffee on the drive over.

“Am I not enough?” he asked, feeling rather, well...insignificant. “Am I not important enough for this to work?”

_You are very important to us, Visitor._

_More than you know._

_More than you believe._

_But you must sacrifice that which is a sacrifice to YOU._

“Are you saying I don’t consider myself—” he began with a snap but realized the answer to his question before he had even finished. 

Well, damn. That kind of hurt.

He dropped his defenses. “Oh.”

That meant he was lost again. He couldn't help but think that there had to be rules posted somewhere on how to do this correctly, and he was almost certain he was currently not doing this correctly. Peculiar aspects certainly had to be involved. Something strange and fantastical, like the bleached bones of ravens or crystals procured from the mountains of the Himalayas during a Blood Moon or some shit. Even then, however, bones and crystal wouldn't mean much to Declan. If he wasn't important enough, then— 

He knew the answer.

A little shakily, he pulled his wallet from his pocket, flipping the simple leather flap back. Normally, when he opened it, his eyes went right to his line-up of cards on one side, but this time, they might as well hadn’t existed. He only saw what was on the other side, sitting protected through see-through plastic.

An old, maybe a little bit faded picture stared back at him. He gently tugged it out of its confines, then placed the wallet away so he could hold it alone. He couldn’t help but grin at it.

Ronan had been six at the time, still too young to decide that he didn't want his hair to grow out, and Matthew had been a happy, cheery-faced three. They had been ecstatic that morning when their dad had woken them all up with the news that the chicken eggs had finally hatched.

He had expected Ronan to chase the newly hatched chicks around the coop all morning, but instead he had sat crossed-legged in the dirt, letting the chicks hop up to him in their own time. Their mom had been laughing, having to ask Ronan no less than three times to smile at the camera, but still he kept getting distracted. Matthew, however, had run right up to the camera to show off his prize. He must have thought that whoever caught the biggest chick won because he had his arms wrapped around the biggest hen they had. His smile was so wide it had reddened his already flushed face, while Ronan sat next to him, his smile less towards the camera and more towards the chicks trying to crowd onto his knees.

Declan wasn’t just giving up a life. He was giving up a life with his brothers.

That was important to him.

He smiled, safe in the fact that both of them would be just as happy whether or not he was there. Ronan could be a free spirit, and Matthew could be joyful, with no one holding either of them back.

He didn’t have to worry about those two missing him. Maybe they would for a little bit, but he also know that he felt a lot closer to those two knuckleheads than they felt towards him, but that was okay. They didn’t have to love him back. If they were safe, and if they were happy, then Declan was at peace.

He looked up at the sky, bright blue through the opening in the trees above, and barely had to give it a thought before he shouted to it, “I sacrifice myself to Cabeswater!”

The energy that had been zipping up and down the length of his body didn’t come to a simple stop in the middle of its route, it cut off with the grace of scissors to a telephone cord. Between one beat and the next it had snapped, completely robbing him of the feeling.

_We welcome you._

_Our Sacrifice._

And then the trees stopped talking.

He breathed heavily, confused. Did he not do that right? He worried he hadn’t. Oh, God, what if he hadn’t? Was it over? He had no idea. Was his arm still bleeding? Realizing he was still staring up at the sky, he lowered his gaze to check the cut, wondering if he was going to need stitches. Maybe he shouldn’t have made it that long. He felt so stupid—and overly dramatic—having sliced his skin from his wrist all the way up to his damn elbow. If he had known it would only take a damn drop he would have just pricked his finger, but no, of course not. He had to go all Shakespearean and make a big deal out of it, and now look at his arm, it looked like some damn cat—

There, standing in the shade just outside the clearing, was Ronan. He watched Declan with a smile.

A real smile.

Declan forgot all about his arm.

“Ronan!”

He didn’t know what happened to the picture he had been holding, to the knife, to the talking trees or to anything else. He left all of that behind and tackled his brother into a hug. He couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged his brother, but Declan was going to make sure that he never again forgot the feeling again. He buried his face against his brother’s shoulder, feeling the fabric of his leather jacket beneath his fingers, feeling the breath as his brother laughed against him.

“I missed you,” he told him, making sure his brother could tell by his voice just how badly.

His brother held him as tightly as he would have held Matthew as he said, “I missed you too.”

He allowed his eyes to fall shut, feeling content. The man in front of him wasn’t Dream Ronan anymore. He was Ronan Lynch, fighter of men, maker of dreams, and beloved younger brother of Declan Lynch.

Together, they raced back to the Barns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just, just, AH. I was so excited to post this one! Ever have a moment in a story that you know is going to happen before you even finish chapter one? This is one of those moments!
> 
> I absolutely loved this chapter, but you see, that worries me. It reminds me of when you think you nailed a math test and then you find out you didn’t know anything on the test after all. I really hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did, and if you there’s anything I could have improved on, remember that critique is always welcome!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	11. Let No One Wake Him

“Declan?" Ronan screamed into the forest like he expected his older brother to jump out from behind any one of the trees around them. He didn't care if it was stupid, he kept yelling. "Declan!" 

_Where are you…_

“Parrish, how much farther?” Gansey called out from where his foot had gotten lodged in a bush. He should have assumed that when he was going to meet up with all of his beloved friends again that morning, that he should have worn stronger shoes than the dress ones that were currently getting caught in every shrub he passed.

Thankfully, Adam wasn’t sprinting through the woods anymore. Instead, he had set a brisk pace as he guided them through the forest, occasionally stopping to regain a sense of direction, and then would head off again, this time with a slightly altered path. 

“Not far,” he said. He was breathless and excited, the kind of excited from someone coming up on something they had been wanting. A runner with the finish line in sight, a fisherman getting a tug on the line. “Your mom was right, Blue. He’s here, right here in Cabeswater.”

“Of course she was right.” Blue sounded appalled that he would think differently. “She wouldn’t have said unless she knew for sure.”

This information did not ease any of the tension that was currently coiling in Ronan’s chest. His forest and his brother lived on two different planes. Sometimes one affected the other, but they never interacted. It was just not a good combination. Cabeswater held the best parts of his life, the elusive parts of his life with the best of his dreams and the best of his people. His brother stayed firmly put in the mundane edition of existence, the part of Ronan's life that he typically only lived in when he had to, when he had to pick up groceries or he wanted to see Matthew. His forest thrived in magic and wonder and frighteningly limitless possibilities. His brother abided by the realms of reality. Ronan went to Cabeswater when he wanted to escape from this world and forget about it for at least a little while. He went to his brother when… 

Ronan furrowed his brows.

When…

“So he’s here right now?” Gansey crossed his arms and eyed the surrounding area as he considered having them all split up in each of the four cardinal directions. “Should we start looking here?”

Ronan surveyed the woods unhappily. That would make no sense. If his brother knew that the forest was unpredictable and, at times, even feral, why the hell would he be here? Even if he didn’t know that and assumed the forest was the same as any other basic forest in Virginia, why the hell would he be here?

There was no reason for him to be here.

“No, not yet,” Adam told him. “But almost. We’re close. Really close.”

“But you don’t know where yet?” Blue asked. Her tone was devoid of any judgement, just befuddlement. “That’s kind of weird. Wouldn’t you already know exactly where by now?”

“Yeah, you’d think,” Adam said, and he didn’t sound happy about it. His eyebrows pinched together in almost a painful manner. He rubbed them to ease away the tension. “We’re close, I know we’re close, but it’s like...it’s like...”

Gansey tugged his foot out from a bush again. He gave it a disappointed look before he turned to Adam. “Like what?”

Adam let his arms flop at his sides. “It’s like I got almost nothing to work with here.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Like Blue, Gansey held no judgement in his question, just befuddlement, and now also a dose of concern.

He shook his head. The more he concentrated, the more he looked to be coming down with a migraine. “No, I got him, it’s just harder than it should be. He’s being...difficult.” He sighed.

“Can you be difficult when a psychic is trying to find you?” Gansey asked in that voice of fascination he had, when they all knew he was currently resisting the urge to whip out his leatherbound journal and write all this information down. 

“Apparently." 

With two of them befuddled and wandering in a forest and Adam with an impending headache, none of them noticed Ronan’s frowning. It was true, his brother was a difficult person, and that was such a light jab at his brother that on a normal basis Ronan wouldn’t have put any thought into it. Now, it made him feel ill. More so than he was already feeling.

Adam stopped to massage his forehead again.

“Come on...” He heard him mutter. “Come on...”

Ronan tried not to watch, already having trouble squashing down the pressing need to tell them all to hurry up even though he knew they couldn’t. He moved his gaze to anywhere else, looking over the forest, wondering how close his brother truly was, wondering what they were going to do when they found him. 

His brother would still be on that list when they found him.

No. He couldn't think about that. Not now, not yet. First thing was first, and that was actually finding him. He was already confused and doubtful as to why his brother, of all people, would be in a forest, let alone _his_ forest. He had difficulty imagining his brother ending up just around the next tree. No matter how much deeper they ventured, Ronan couldn’t picture it, couldn't see his brother in this scenery. Perhaps he was lost in a cave. Maybe he was trapped in a structure up high? Or he could be lower, in the ground beneath his feet—

No. No, Ronan wasn’t going to think about that.

Adam dropped his hand as his eyes widened. “I got him!” 

Everyone jumped as he suddenly sprinted through the woods again.

“Adam!" Blue yelped. As the slowest runner in the bunch and already winded from the last impromptu sprint across uneven terrain, complete exasperation took over her expression. She went to race after him, then did a hop and a spin as she turned around to grab onto Gansey's arm and tug him out of another damn bush. 

“Jesus Christ,” Gansey said as he lost a shoe. He didn’t remember this place being so tangly. He looked up to where two of his friends were rapidly becoming mere blurs in the distance. “Lynch, Parrish!”

“Not so fast!” Blue shouted after them.

 _Hell no, go faster._ Within seconds Ronan had fallen into stride with Adam, keeping pace with him as they bolted around trees and leapt over roots and bushes.

The crunch and crushing of leaves and debris filled their ears as they ran, with a faint echo following them from Gansey and Blue far in the back. Gansey only slowed because Blue was the slowest, and Ronan only slowed because only Adam knew where to go. 

Ronan’s eyes darted left and right. Nothing particular showed up in the blurry view they had of the forest as they rushed through it, no cave nor castle nor lake that could suggest what might have happened. There was nothing but forest, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what made this one spot so special that this would be the place that they had been trying to find all day.

Dirt and leaves flew up around Adam’s feet as he skidded to a halt. His arm shot out in warning.

“Ronan,” he said, voice coming out panicked. “Ronan, no! Wait!”

He tried to make a grab at him but Ronan darted around and out of reach. It hadn’t proved to have made much of a difference, as he only made it a few extra steps more than Adam did before he too froze in place.

It was the perfect little clearing, with nothing but sunlight and grass bleached a light green from it. It was a simple, unassuming area of the forest. No branches obstructed the sky above it, leaving the blue sky bright and visible through an opening in the canopy above.

Lying in the center, among the grass, was a person. 

Ronan would know that person anywhere, even when he was lying on the ground, motionless.

* * *

_BEEP_

_BEEP_

_BEEP_

_BE—_

Ashley rose her hand up from the blankets and smashed the infernal device with the side of her fist. It didn't strike the off button as she had hoped. After a few more smashes, her fingers crawled to the back of it in search of the cord, found it, and ripped it out of the wall, letting the room fall back into beepless silence. Satisfied, she swept the thing off the nightstand, along with a few of the neighboring items, and shoved her face back into the pillow. Although the room hadn’t yet begun to lighten, she pulled the blanket up and over her head, determined to shut out the world.

An arm wrapped around her waist and she grumbled as she was pulled into an embrace. She kicked a leg, not in the mood to cuddle when she was trying to return to unconsciousness. The culprit threw a leg over her hip, trapping both of hers down, and pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

She hissed but it was muffled from the blankets, like a tiny snake curled up in its hut, warding off intrusions. “You’re on my side.”

“I’m cold.”

“You’re full of shit.”

She heard a chuckle and then felt a kiss on the back of her neck. “Shower or sleep this morning?”

“Sleep, not even close.”

“I gotta take a shower before class. Wanna go get breakfast this morning?”

She sighed, drawn-out, put upon. “What time is it?”

“Probably best if I don’t check.”

“Is the _sun_ even up yet?”

“...Well...I’m sure it is somewhere.”

Her body tensed as she made a pained, irritated noise, but in the end she settled for a, “Fine.” 

The grip around her waist tightened into a hug. She allowed the culprit responsible for her lack of sleep to place a total of three kisses on her face before she started hissing again. She had sharp nails, long and filed and brightly colored, and she would use them if provoked. Luckily the culprit had slipped out of the bed by then, pulling the comforter up further to cover her head completely, like how she preferred, to block out the soon to rise sun and the light that would blare from his cell phone.

That cell phone used to be used as an alarm clock. There was a reason why it wasn’t anymore.

He unplugged it from the wall, the light burning his retinas momentarily before he could read the time that flashed on the screen.

_4:45 am_   
_Tuesday, April 24, 2018_

He shut the bedroom door carefully behind him, relaxing once he heard the soft _click_ assuring him it was completely closed. He yawned on the way down the hall, pausing next to the window to pull open the blinds. He hated blinds. He and Ash would have to go shopping for curtains soon.

He took a minute or two to simply stare out the window, folding his arms on the windowsill. He pressed his forehead against the glass, happy to find it still a little chilled from the night before, before the upcoming spring and summer months changed that. He didn't use to waste time like this, but nowadays he saw it less as wasting time and more as savoring the moment. 

He couldn’t yet make out the redbricks roads in all the darkness, but he could see the first hints of dawn reaching out in the distance. In an hour's time, the sky would have lightened into a soothing shade of dark blue or purple, revealing all the little gardens and early morning college students in his neighborhood. Next would be the dog walkers and joggers. By the time he and Ash got into the car, most of his senior neighbors would be out on their porches and having their coffees, waving as he went by. 

Although he enjoyed the view, he felt a little sad. He loved D.C., loved his university and the food and those old-fashioned redbrick roads, but with it all came a pang of loneliness. When he looked up at the dark sky, he couldn't see the stars like he could in Henrietta. He didn't like the somber effect creeping up on him, so he messaged Ronan a quick good morning. For all he knew, his brother was already awake.

A second later, he saw a little message bubble pop up beneath his, the three little dots moving as someone typed on the other side. Declan smiled. So his brother was awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! Thank you to everyone for all the love this story has gotten! I appreciate every reader this story has, and for those of you who have left comments and reviews (you guys know who you are!), it means so much to me. Especially for the previous chapter! I had been so nervous over that one and then—BOOM. You guys gave me five comments on it in a single day and I had been so relieved.
> 
> Also, a big thank you to smallerthanzero for pointing out that St. Mark’s Eve is April 24, and not March 21. It seems that I mixed up the date of the holiday with the Spring Solstice. I have gone back and switched out the few times I mentioned “March” in the story for “April,” but do not fret! This doesn’t change anything in the story at all.
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	12. A Sleep Like Death

Declan lied on his back, his legs bent towards one direction and arms lying out on either side of him. His hair barely looked ruffled, the dark curls resting atop his forehead above closed eyes. His face was serene as he breathed, chest rising and falling in a slow, melodic rhythm.

Ronan hit the ground beside him so hard he felt it jar his knees and send the impact up through his entire body. Even with his brother’s breathing apparent, he still pressed shaking hands to either side of his neck. He felt a steady pulse beneath his fingers, could see a regular pattern of breathing. In, out. In, out. Very calm, very unhurried. Nothing at all like Ronan’s own breathing.

Dirt flew up and onto Ronan as Gansey skidded down beside him. His panic level could not hope to reach the degree that Ronan was currently experiencing, but he had known Declan for as long as he had known Ronan, since they were children. His fingers trembled where he pressed them to Declan’s chest, waiting. He let out a visible breath when he felt an inhale.

“God damn,” he said, looking about ready to fall over. He settled for hanging his head instead.

“Is he…?” Blue asked, waiting in the shadows surrounding the clearing.

Ronan ignored the implication. Completely ignored it. He was not going to start imagining what would be going through his head right now if they had found Declan in any other state than a breathing one.

 _Don’t think about,_ Ronan told himself strictly. _Do not think about it._

“He’s alive,” Adam told her, since Gansey was still catching his breath. “He’s just...” He approached slowly, looking more baffled than anything. “...sleeping?”

Ronan kept snapping his fingers in front of Declan's face but was getting no reaction from him. 

“Something’s wrong with him,” he said and hated saying it. Something was wrong with Declan, the one person who never had anything wrong with him—except for his personality, but that couldn’t be helped.

Gansey ran his hands through Declan’s hair, to the back of his head and to sides of his neck, all with the diligence of a surgeon as he searched for injuries. His face twisted in perplexity. “He looks…otherwise fine.”

Ronan lied Declan’s head on his lap. His brother’s breathing didn’t even falter in rhythm. He brushed the bangs away from his face. Nothing. His eyes didn’t even twitch. “Is he drugged?”

_Poisoned?_

_Tranquilized?_

_In a trance?_

“Ronan, we don’t know,” Gansey said, answering all of his unvoiced questions. He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Not yet, anyway.”

“This place feels weird,” Blue said, partially to herself as she took a few steps into the sunlight. Her eyes held suspicion in them as she blinked against it. “There’s definitely something...off, about this spot.”

“There is,” Adam agreed. He remained the only one standing as Blue went to crouch beside the others, leaving him to walk about the little circle of sunlit grass alone.

With the exception of Ronan, they all looked over the little clearing, expressions varying from concern to apprehension to mystification. Perhaps it would have been a simple little patch of slightly dried grass in an average forest, a place deer might have gathered to graze, but in Cabeswater, it left too much to be desired. Something special radiated over the place. It left an unsettling feeling in all of their chests as they wondered what exactly made it special.

“There’s a lot of dirt on his arm,” Blue pointed out. She placed a few fingers on the exposed skin of Declan’s arm. She glanced between his arms, noticing how only one had the sleeve rolled up.

“I don’t think that’s dirt.” Adam picked up something from the grass. The sunlight from above glinted off the stainless steel of a pocket knife. A dark substance marred the edges of it.

The complexion of Blue’s face plummeted several shades as she snatched her hand back as though burned. At the same time, Ronan snatched Declan's arm in her place. He scrubbed away at it with his thumb and felt the raised skin of an incision before any of them saw it. His fingers followed up the arm, feeling the scar reach all the way to the elbow.

 _“A blood sacrifice?”_ Blue hit an octave high enough to make the other three wince. “Does he have any idea how serious that is?”

“Declan, you fucker,” Ronan said miserably, pulling his brother closer to him.

“The blood creates the link,” Adam went on to explain in Blue's place since she looked too stricken to continue. He twisted the knife around in his hand curiously. He moved his gaze to settle it on Declan, as though wishing he could ask him what he instead asked the other three, “But what did he sacrifice?”

“His life?” Ronan sounded furious, but none of them could tell where the fury was supposed to be directed at. Adam, Gansey, Blue, himself, or Declan.

“I don’t think so. He’s still breathing.” Adam snapped the knife closed and slipped it into his pocket. He began walking around the clearing again, eyes searching.

Blue still looked upset from when she had touched his arm, but she gave it her best effort to not appear bothered by it as she said, “If not his life, then something else that means a lot to him. It only works if it means a lot.”

“Right then.” Gansey nodded and turned to Ronan. “What would mean a lot to Declan?” He had to ask the question twice before Ronan took notice.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what goes through his head!” Ronan thought he did once, but now he had no idea. “I don’t even know why the hell he would even be here.” He lowered his head until it rested on top of his brother’s. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the gentle sound of Declan’s breathing.

“Well, this clearly wasn’t an accident.” Adam’s voice sounded a tad faded with the ten feet of distance he had walked. He had lapped around the clearing twice by then and, by the look on his face and the hands on his hips, hadn’t come across anything else.

Ronan made an afflicted sound in his throat.

“There aren't any signs of a struggle," Gansey said. It was a bit of an obvious thing to highlight, but in comparison to all the other observations they had made so far, it was the most consoling piece of evidence he had to offer. "I don't think anyone was hurting him." 

Ronan flicked an angry gaze at Declan’s scarred arm. “Except himself.”

Blue pointed, knowing better than to touch him this time when she said, “He’s holding something.”

In Declan’s right hand, a piece of paper lied. Ronan reached over and grabbed it first. Declan’s fingers were soft and pliable, the paper only held down by the weight of his thumb rather than by any grip, and was easily tugged free.

Ronan’s throat tightened as though someone had seized it. He stared at the picture, at perhaps the last thing his brother had seen before his eyes had closed.

* * *

It had been three months since the sacrifice. Or...had it been four? Declan didn’t know. He didn’t really remember a time before then anymore.

He had spent Christmas with his family, and it had been the best Christmas of his life. They had opened presents and taken pictures and tasted all the holiday sweets his mom had baked for them and he had even wrangled Ronan into wearing a tie. He only wore it for an hour at the church but _still._

They had celebrated New Year’s, and then St. Patrick’s Day, and then Easter. Matthew had blown out candles for his birthday and only a few weeks later Declan had found himself blowing out candles for his own before he had been bombarded by all the wonderful weird-ass gifts his family had gotten him. He still couldn’t figure out this odd box that Ronan had dreamt for him, and he didn't know what Matthew thought he would do with a limited-edition fidget spinner, but he loved them regardless. Ashley still teased him about how he placed them next to his trophies in their townhouse.

There were still issues, still reasons for Declan to want to pull on his hair: Matthew poured all of his focus into his lacrosse training and spared none for geometry class, and Declan still got calls on a regular basis from the Henrietta police station that his brother was suspected of street racing again. Instances like those made his face pinch up, he could feel it, but he wasn’t going to break down a fucking door because his brother got another speeding ticket. Of course his brother got another speeding ticket. His brother was Ronan Lynch.

His brothers still didn’t have any plans for the future and neither of them were interested in going to college, and yet, Declan had no problem with that.

He wanted to laugh, feeling that if he did it would be a bit hysterically. What had once caused him to seize up as though he had just been shot now didn’t faze him at all. So they didn’t want to go to college. So what? Who the hell cared? Declan didn’t.

Maybe college wasn’t for them. He might eventually need to start nudging Matthew to pick a direction to go in, but there was no rush. As for Ronan, he was a farmer and a creator, and Declan couldn't be more ecstatic about it. He _might_ have researched a few schools with agricultural programs, but he’d keep that to himself for now. Right now, he didn’t want his little brothers going anywhere.

Which might have made him a hypocrite, since he had gone back to D.C. when holiday break had ended. He couldn't help it. He was a man of drive and determination, and the big city and its endless opportunities called to him. Also, Ashley had missed him. 

“You mean you miss her,” Ronan had practically hissed when Declan had been packing up.

Ronan Lynch was a snake, a highly venomous one at that, and Declan had been careful to stay out of striking range when he had been having the conversation. Whenever he could, he kept something between them, like his suitcase, the kitchen island, a table, one of his mom’s giant potted plants in the living room, Matthew...

“We miss each other,” he had amended. It hadn’t helped. Ronan had looked about ready to grab the nearest, heaviest object and pelt him with it.

It was frightening, pissing off Ronan to that degree, but it was also touching. Every day he knew he was missed, and every day he found new messages from everyone in the family. 

Even Ronan’s friends contacted him from time to time, friends that Ronan saw as family and friends that Declan had once seen as a barrier between him and his brother. He hadn’t known there had been a door installed in that barrier, albeit camouflaged and under heavy lock and key, but now those locks had been undone and that door was wide open.

Gansey no longer jumped to greet him like he was trying to beat him away with layers of politeness like Declan couldn’t see right through what he was doing. Now when Gansey shook his hand and smiled at him, it was genuine. Declan had searched for any signs of that smile Gansey saved for people he pretended to like, and Declan couldn’t find a trace of it.

Adam had always been a hell of a lot more straightforward. He still remembered the night he had gone to Monmouth Manufacturing to speak to Ronan, a letter of notice that his brother was getting kicked out of Aglionby clutched in a fist that he desperately wanted to send flying at Ronan's face, but Adam had answered the door instead. When Declan had wanted in, because, damn it, his brother lived there and he should get full visitation rights, Adam had slyly blocked the entryway with one arm as though to say, "Try me, bitch." 

He enjoyed that nowadays he could appreciate listening to Adam’s southern drawl in a pleasant conversation rather than a verbal stand off.

He still didn’t know much about Ronan’s latest friend, Blue. The only solid facts he had collected so far included her eccentric preference in style, and that she came from a family of psychics. Declan had smiled politely when they had told him that. If his brother was happy, then Declan could bite his tongue and deal with it. He would simply slip a few crosses into Ronan’s bag whenever his brother was planning to see his friends and hope for the best.

All of the attention might have been excessive for a twenty-year-old university student, but he didn't care. Screw the other students in his study group who called him a homesick country boy every time he went outside to talk on his phone. He didn't care about their opinions of him. The only opinions that mattered were his family’s.

The first thing he did every time he exited any sort of lecture, class, or meeting, was to pull out his phone. It used to give such intense anxiety, wondering what he would see on the screen this time, wondering if the whole world was going to end for him as soon as he read the messages waiting for him. Now he couldn’t wait to check his phone, and he was never disappointed with what he saw.

He could get a message linked with photos from Gansey,

_A 500-year-old book from England, suspected to have been written by the escaped witch Hildegard! I brought my protective gloves and they still won’t open the glass to let me read it._

An email from Adam, because Adam still didn’t have a cell phone to text with and was too much of a prick to accept the one Declan had offered him,

_Was awake all night finishing an essay and Professor Billings postpones the due date because of a hangover. Kill me._

A voicemail from Blue,

_Hey! My mom has a feeling today and long story short, don’t eat any seafood today._

Several emojis and media posts sent from Ashley,

_@declan.t.lynch: hey bebe! Friends and I thinking about Red Lobster tonight, you should come._

And plenty of texts from his family.

_Alright son just hear me out. Submarine armadillos_

_Hi baby! Make you sure you eat today! I’m making the pasta you like this weekend! Come visit!_

_DELCNA THERES A GIANT SPIDER IN THE SJOWER ITS TRYING TO KILL ME HELP_

_Fuck you. Move back home_

Declan held the phone to his chest and leaned back against the wall, simply taking some time to breathe. With his university sweatshirt on, his bookbag cast aside at his feet, and his hair more curly than it’s been since he was fifteen, he let the other students in the hall walk past him and didn’t give a damn about the clock on the wall. He smiled up at the ceiling, sending up a quick prayer for all he was thankful for.

He was so happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End
> 
> I want to give a big thank you to everyone who has been following this story with me. It’s been an absolute pleasure—hahahaha I’m just kidding! I’m not done yet! I have so many chapters I’m looking forward to. I don’t know how many chapters there will be total, but I think this is about the halfway point. So, if you’re still interested in seeing what happens next, I hope you will come with me for the rest of the story!
> 
> A word of notice regarding the email issues AO3 had a few weeks backs. Some comments for the previous chapter could have possibly been lost around the time I posted it, but do not fret! Everything seems to be working smoothly once more! I wanted to let you all know so no one would worry.
> 
> And heads up! The next chapter’s going to be a longer one than usual! I wanted to try to break it into two parts, but it never felt right, so the next one will be one of the longer chapters we’ve had so far!
> 
> Also! I recently started a new job! I’m super excited about it! I’m confident I can still create a chapter every two weeks, but I wanted to let you all know just in case.
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	13. Dream A Little Dream Of You

Ronan’s brother slept peacefully, eyes closed and relaxed, breaths rising and falling evenly. The dark curls of his hair looked even darker strewn about the light blue of the pillow. His hands rested atop a quilt, as regal and pale as his Irish ancestors. Despite the multicolored assortment of linens and cushions, he lied upon the bed as majestic as royalty. Even in a cramped, dark room, on a bed that had been clearly dragged inside and left at an angle in the corner when the draggers had run out of steam, he made it look like a scene from a fairy tale.

To Ronan, it was a scene from a nightmare.

The ladies of Fox Way hadn't hesitated when they got the call about what had happened and set to work shoving aside furniture and anything else in their reading room to make room for Declan. They had all wordlessly decided that the room would be blocked off and they would start using the living room for their clients instead.

It meant more to Ronan than he could manage to say.

The house of the psychics had become the only hospital he could turn to, the one place that might be able to cure his brother.

The others had known without asking that they wouldn’t be taking his brother to the Barns. It was the place his mother had been in her endless sleep before she had died. It was the very place where his father had died on the driveway. Seeing his brother in a near copy and paste scenario was not an option.

Ronan brushed the bangs from his brother’s face.

His chest rose and fell. His eyes stayed closed.

He was a sedentary prince from an epic tale, having fallen into an endless sleep like the queen before him.

 _Non mortem, somni fratrem._ Not death, but his brother, sleep.

“Come on, man,” Ronan whispered. Could his brother hear him? He took ahold of one of Declan’s hands and clutched it. Could he tell that he was there? He squeezed his hand, but still received nothing for a reaction. “Wake up.”

The psychics walked into the room quietly, but Ronan didn’t look up. He had used up all his patience waiting for them to gather everything they might have needed: candles, incense, lists of prayers and chants, herbs that were known to stir the sleeping and clueless. Ronan didn’t care what they did as long as Declan opened his eyes, sat up in bed, and started yelling at him about where the fuck were they.

“What’s the plan?” Gansey asked, fully prepared to dive right into whatever the ladies of Fox Way needed him to do.

The ladies stayed by the doorway. They all stared at the person on the bed as though they didn’t recognize that kind of species of person.

“Is that...him?” Maura asked.

“No, I just thought I’d bring in some random guy off the street—”

“Ronan.” Gansey raised a hand before his friend could raise his voice any higher. He turned back to Maura. “Yes, that’s him. Is there a problem?”

“Yes, there is,” was Calla’s immediate response. She leaned against the door frame and waved at Declan’s form. “His spirit isn’t here.”

“What,” was all Ronan could say to that.

“Wait.” Blue was the first to recover from the stun effect Calla had hit them all with. “So this is just his body?”

Maura walked up to him and, after waiting a beat for any disapproval from the brother, placed a hand on his forehead. “Mostly. There’s only a shred of his conscious left here. Just enough to keep him alive.”

Ronan didn’t care for her choice of words. “Then where is _he?”_

The third psychic that had entered, Jimi, quietly wandered off to pour spring water into their scribing bowl. She peeked inside and said, “He’s still in Cabeswater.”

No one said anything for a long stretch of time, not because they were too shocked by the revelation—which, admittedly, some of them might have been—but because every one of them in the room could feel the waves of rage emanating from one of them in particular.

Once again Ronan said, except this time voice completely devoid of emotion, “What.”

Next stop, apparently, was Cabeswater.

Gansey enforced that they all rest for the night and set off first thing in the morning. They had been racing around Virginia since meeting up at Nino’s when Blue had dropped the news on them and it showed. None of them had eaten, Gansey barely having convinced them all to stop and drink something, and Blue hadn’t slept at all the night before. She refused to acknowledge it, but they could all see the strain on her face.

Courtesy of the Fox Way family, Maura had insisted they all stay together. They had pulled out every reserve of spare blankets and pillows they had to offer. Gansey and Adam slept on the couches and, although she had her own room, Blue had dragged her comforter down the stairs and made a pallet on the floor beside them. Ronan had stayed in the room with his brother.

Everyone, with the exception of Ronan, slept with their car keys under their pillows that night.

When the sky had barely lightened enough to pass as morning, they all downed their coffees, convinced Ronan to take a granola bar, and took off for Cabeswater. Blue took the role as driver once more with the Fox Way Ford, as none of them could trust the Pig to run well and none of them could trust Ronan not to make at least a dozen driving violations on the way there.

“I say we make our back to where we found him yesterday. That has to be where his spirit separated from his body," Gansey said.

“What would a spirit even look like?” Adam said.

“Like a lot of things,” Blue said.

Ronan stayed quiet. While the other passengers of the car went back and forth, he kept his gaze out the window, watching but not truly seeing the passing fields as he came to realize something very important.

He was pissed.

From the start, he had understood that, to some extent, this was Declan’s fault. He just didn’t know how much of an extent it would be.

His brother was too quick, too clever, and too strong to simply _accidental_ himself into peril. Ronan had zero doubt that his brother could maneuver himself out of a car crash or overpower a robber at a bank. He was paranoid enough to never travel alone at night despite being a male boxer of over six-feet tall with at least two different weapons on him at all times. Ronan knew he kept a fire extinguisher under his bed because he had seen it. Ronan knew he kept a gun in his car because Matthew had told him about it. Declan never ate food that wasn’t from home or a certified restaurant. Declan never got into any car other than his own.

His brother was the biggest reason Ronan had refused therapy after their father’s death, because if anyone needed therapy, it was Declan.

And if Declan wasn’t taking therapy, no way in hell was Ronan either.

Still, Ronan had figured that something must have been out of Declan’s control for him to stumble into a situation this bad. There must have been some outside force involved, something that had forced his brother into a deadly position that he otherwise would have avoided. A person, a creature, an object. Anything that could have put his brother on Blue’s damn death list, anything that Ronan could fight to get his brother off of it.

But that wasn’t shaping up to be the case. He wanted to leave room for doubt, but couldn’t. Everything was pointing to _Declan_ as the very source threatening himself. If _Declan_ hadn’t gone into Cabeswater, things would be fine. If _Declan_ hadn’t pulled out a knife and a suspiciously wholesome picture, things would be fine.

Things would be fine and Ronan would have enjoyed a lazy morning at Nino’s with his friends and his favorite soda in hand. Adam would have talked about his studies and that professor he hates. Gansey would have talked about what he saw in Europe and showed them all the pictures he had taken. Blue would have talked about St. Mark’s Eve—without any added dread mixed into it. Not once would Declan have been mentioned or thought about throughout the day.

Now, Declan was all any of them could think about as they traveled to Cabeswater to find him. Again.

At the back of his mind, behind all the worries that plagued him, Ronan thought that his brother had better be prepared for when he finally got his hands on him.

The conversation in the car abruptly died as Blue pulled the Ford into the fields once more. Ronan knew the reason why, knew they were all staring at the other car in the field with them. Ronan pointedly ignored the Volvo, still parked in the shade of those few trees. He kept his eyes averted until they had all walked into the forest and he could safely straighten out his gaze without worry of seeing it.

He was going to kill Declan for putting him through this, so help him, God.

 _SAGITTIS,_ voices screamed at them.

Blue and Gansey screamed with it. All four of them stumbled in various directions, adrenaline shocking their hearts into a faster pace before they could recognize the voices.

_Grata! Grata!_

_Nos fallant te sic!_

“Oh!” Gansey’s face, albeit a little pale, lit up. He raised his sights to the leaves of the trees above. “I remember you. Good to hear from you again.”

“Maybe if they gave us a little heads up next time,” Blue muttered, a hand on her still rising and falling chest.

The Latins words came from every direction and filled their heads, surrounding them with fondness and a hint of music.

Even with his gaze on the trees, Ronan didn’t miss the fact that the other three had turned to look at him. Although Blue had next to no experience, Gansey and Adam had attended the same Latin class as Ronan. However, studying how the verbs worked and actually hearing the language turned out to be completely different challenges.

Ronan nodded at the branches above their heads. “They said they missed us.”

Adam smiled up at the tree he stood next to, clearly more touched by their compliment than by the ones he had received from most people. “We missed you too.”

_Greywaren!_

The forest greeted Ronan with their special name for him. None of them understood how the name had come to be or what the forest meant by it (Gansey had yet to have given up his search to discover the meaning of it and likely never would). They only knew that it was another word for dreamer, another word for Ronan.

Although Ronan was the only one to fluently decipher Latin, Gansey, Adam, and Blue all recognized their own names the forest had bestowed upon them. They smiled at each one in turn.

_Militem!_

(The Knight.)

The forest’s name for Gansey.

_Magus!_

(The Magician.)

The forest’s name for Adam.

_Speculum!_

(The Mirror.)

The forest’s name for Blue.

“This is great.” Gansey beamed at the trees surrounding them. “I’m willing to bet they can help us.”

Ronan felt his breath hitch at that. The anticipation shot adrenaline through his veins faster than when the trees had spooked them. The path to his brother that they had been on the hunt for since yesterday now lied out before them. If his brother was in Cabeswater—which he was, the damn idiot—then Cabeswater itself would know precisely where.

He steadied his breathing. “Do you know where my brother is?”

_Quod unus?_

(Which one?)

Ronan found it touching that his forest actually knew he had two. “The older one,” he clarified.

_Sacrificium?_

None of them needed Ronan to translate that. Even Blue, whose public high school had never offered classes on Latin, could pick out the meaning.

The forest’s name for Declan.

They all fell into a tense, horrified silence.

Ronan steadied his breathing again. “He was used as a sacrifice?”

_Imo! Imo!_

(Yes! Yes!)

Although that was simple enough to pick up on, and even Blue could have guessed the answer based on how cheerily the trees had spoken, Ronan still translated to the other three. He sounded despondent as he said, "He was."

“We already know that,” Adam pointed out, then shifted his attention to the forest. “Why did he sacrifice himself?”

_Voluit manere hic._

_Voluit nobiscum._

(He wished to stay here.

He wished to join us.)

“Why the fuck would he want to do that?” By the befuddled expressions of his company, Ronan added for their benefit, “Why would he want to stay here?”

_Ad somnia sua._

_Nunc et in somnis, in perpetuum._

(To have his dreams.

Now he dreams forever.)

“Shit,” Ronan whispered.

Blue stepped up next to him, concerned as she looked him over and asked, “What’d they say?”

“They gave him his dreams,” Ronan said. His expression soured into something awful as the irony dawned on him. “He’s literally _dreaming.”_

Gansey rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. Only a forest Ronan created could be that morbid and punny.

“That explains the sleeping bit,” Adam mused, “but how do we get him to wake up?”

Ronan nodded at that and then asked the forest, “How do we get him to stop dreaming?”

_Prohibere?_

_Non, non._

_Voluit, ut somnium_

_Ipse somnia in aeternum nunc._

(Stop?

No, no.

He wished to dream.

He dreams forever now.)

“That’s not going to happen.” Ronan’s hands tightened into fists. “Just tell me how to get him out of here.”

_Sacrificium tuum, et non dimittet nobis_

_Pertinet hic et nunc._

_Pertinet ad nos nunc._

(Our Sacrifice won’t leave us.

He belongs here now.

He belongs to us now.)

The other three jumped inches into the air when he jumped volumes and shrieked, “Like hell he does!”

“Ronan, details, details,” Gansey moved his hand in a circular motion to emphasize. “We’re trying to keep up here.”

“They said they fucking own him or some shit!” Ronan spun his fury in the direction of a few singled out trees. “Like hell you do!”

“That’s what happens when you use blood,” Blue said, miserable and frustrated as she pulled on her hair. Several barrettes fell out. “It’s a bond. In a sense, they do own a part of him now.”

Ronan switched his fury from the trees to Blue. It was shocking that he didn’t spit venom or blood as he hissed, _“Like hell.”_

“Don’t get mad at her for what your brother did,” Adam said, stepping forward. “It’s not her fault he decided to do this to himself.”

Ronan leveled a poisonous gaze on him. “That doesn’t mean it’s his fault either.”

Adam looked like he was trying to appear mad but came across more confused as he said, “Of course this is his fault.”

Gansey stepped forward to intervene, but Ronan raised his voice before he could speak, “Declan isn’t an idiot, Adam. He wouldn’t do this for no reason.”

Gansey went to try again and frowned as now Adam spoke over him. Gansey threw a look at Blue that pleaded, _help me out here._

“What does it matter what reason he had?” Adam asked in the same voice a teacher would use on a student that should already understand what was written on the blackboard. “He sliced his damn _arm,_ Ronan. He sacrificed himself to a forest he knew nothing about. How stupid to do you have to be to do that?”

“You did that!” Blue spun on him, throwing her arms up in the air. “I distinctly remembered how _horrified_ we all were.”

“Yeah, but I actually had a reason,” he reminded her.

Ronan could feel his arms and shoulders burning from how much his muscles were tensing up. “And Declan didn’t?”

Adam prevented Gansey from speaking again with a sharp, “What reason would he have? It wasn't like he had a gun pressed to his head. He was just getting into our shit again like he _always_ does. It’s not that hard to put two and two together.”

“First of all.” Blue crossed her arms as she looked between them. “This is really not the time, Adam. Second, how is any of this helping us right now? Third, Ronan, you need to back up. Ronan, I mean it. Ronan!”

She jumped in between the two boys before Ronan could steamroll over and grab Adam by the shirt. She pressed a hand to his chest and glared up at him, daring him to push her aside. It did not help when Adam too marched forward until Blue had to press a hand to his chest as well.

“Both of you,” she snapped. She could feel their hearts beating away in their chests, going rapidly. “This is useless!”

“You think I’m just going to stand here and let you talk shit about my brother?” Ronan challenged.

Adam looked torn between hurt and furious. “Why wouldn’t you? You talk more shit about him than anyone else.”

“One.” Gansey pushed Ronan back. “Two.” Gansey pushed Adam back. “And three.” Blue gave him a deathly stare as Gansey pushed her back too. “That’s enough of this. We’re doing nothing here but wasting time.”

“Hey!” Blue put her hands on her hips. “I was not a part of that.”

“The mediator is still a part of the debate,” he told her.

“Do not use your business tone with me.”

“Come on, Gansey,” Adam said, sounding stung that not one of them was taking his side. “His arm was cut, he had the picture. He must have known exactly what he was doing.”

_Fecit._

(He did.)

That was simple enough Latin for Gansey to pick up on and decidedly not appreciate. He pinched the bridge of his nose before addressing one cluster of trees, “I’m sorry, but this is a private conversation. Could we have a moment?”

_Sane, Militem._

(Of course, Knight.)

“Thank you.”

“Declan wouldn’t do this on purpose,” Ronan told Adam. He meant for his words to come out as a warning, but they came out scraped with a lot more pain than he was okay with. “He wouldn’t.”

“Ronan.” Adam’s anger melted into sympathy, and Ronan hated it enough to want the anger back instead. “He already did.”

“That isn’t important. What’s important is finding Declan.” Gansey made sure he had all their attention before continuing. “If anyone is going to hamper that mission, then feel free to go back to the car and wait for us there.”

Blue's answer was to cross her arms again. Her gaze flicked between the three boys, a promise to be a knife for any more tension that needed to be cut.

The anger in Adam’s face returned, but with his eyes intent on the dirt at his feet, it was evident that the anger wasn’t meant for any of the people with him.

Ronan said nothing.

Gansey sighed, realizing that was the best truce he could hope for. He turned to Ronan and told him, “We’re here to find his spirit. Ask them where we can find that.”

Ronan sniffed and turned away from them all, lifting his sights to the assortment of branches above as he asked, voice low and promising of lethality, “Where is he.”

It sounded to all of them a lot less of a question and more of a demand, a threat, but the trees hardly sounded offended in their reply. Their musical voices only sounded a bit confused by it, a bit concerned, and a bit curious.

_Vis videre nostrum Sacrificium, Greywaren?_

_Ipse est in somnia sua._

_Non eo usque ad eum._

(Do you wish to see our Sacrifice, Greywaren?

He resides in his dreams.

You will not have to travel far to reach him.)

“Lynch,” Gansey addressed gently, coming up beside him. “The verdict?”

“They said if we keep going,” Ronan paused, not sure he believed the next part, “we’ll find him.”

“Then we keep going.”

Gansey waved for them all to follow, choosing a set path deeper into the woods. None of them asked what direction exactly as they followed. In Cabeswater, many things could exist, but direction didn’t.

Each of them kept their gaze in constant movement. They all knew what they were searching for, but none of them knew what they were looking for. Declan's body resided back at 300 Fox Way, lying comfortably on a bed of handmade quilts and pillows, but his spirit somehow floated among the forest. How his spirit manifested was entirely beyond their knowledge.

Hopefully, it would be something obvious, something easy. A disembodied voice, a shadow, an image in water. The best form, they all imagined, would be a milky and transparent image of Declan himself. That’s how Blue’s mother described the ghosts she saw on St. Mark’s Eve. That’s how she must have seen Declan’s spirit too that night, among the other ghosts of people destined to die this year.

It could also be, Ronan thought as a light flashed in one of his eyes, a shiny object on the ground.

The rest of them knew he had found something by how he bolted away. They hurried over and watched as he skidded down an incline and leapt over the bushes in his path.

“Lynch, what is it?” Gansey called out, holding out a hand to Blue as they picked their way down to him.

Ronan stopped a foot in front of the object. About the size of his palm, a circular item lied half-hidden in the grass. The sunlight that reached it reflected off a ring of gold around a glass center.

He knelt beside it. “It’s a compass.”

“Ronan, I wouldn’t touch it,” Gansey warned. He sighed as his friend did just that.

Gently he picked it up, wiping away the bits of dirt that clung to it with his thumb. His eyebrows pinched together in confusion as the dial behind the glass spun in lazy circles.

He was pretty sure a compass wasn’t supposed to do that, but he found more interest in the other parts of the device. The ring around the glass glistened with the brightness of real gold. The rest of the body was painted a flawless white. It must have cost a pretty penny.

“This is Declan’s.”

“How do you know?” Adam asked, sounding doubtful that Ronan would recognize one of his brother’s belongings. He had known Ronan long enough to know that Ronan only memorized the things of Declan that would aid him in getting away from him: the sight of his car, the sound of his polished shoes clicking up the stairs to Monmouth Manufacturing.

Ronan flipped it over.

_Imported from Italy._

“It’s Declan’s,” he said. His fingers tightened around it.

They were getting close, the compass was proof of it. He raised a hardened gaze on the forest ahead, determined to travel as far as he needed to go.

Except, he didn’t see a forest.

Forget the direction, suddenly their current location didn’t exist anymore. The sight of trees, the sound of birds and insects, the smell of pollen and pine had all abandoned their senses. The forest had vanished. The scene before them had been entirely switched out for a new one.

“And would you like that with or without mayo?”

“The hell?” Ronan jumped back into Gansey, who in turned stumbled back into Adam who had already knocked into Blue. It was a miracle they all didn’t fall over as one.

All four of them stared at the face of a blonde, pony-tailed waitress, who had her notepad and pen out and ready. She had her focus directed away from them, eyes glancing between her notepad and the table of people in front of her.

“Cialina?" Blue's voice hit a hysterically high pitch as she stared at her former co-worker. She spun on Ronan with an expression that screamed _what the fuck, bro._

Tables and chairs and _people_ surrounded them, all crammed inside of a poorly lit building, despite the giant windows taking up an entire wall and the florescent lights overhead. Indistinguishable chatter and the smell of fried food bombarded them from all sides.

“And we’re suddenly at Nino’s.” Adam did not share any of the flabbergasted expressions of his three friends and simply shrugged. He gave the establishment an unimpressed once over as though he could name at least three weirder Wednesdays than this. “Alright.”

“Ronan, what did you do?” Gansey spun on him next.

“What’re you looking at me for? All I did was pick up the compass!”

“That’s something you did, then.”

A deep, rather bland voice rang out across the restaurant to them, a little more loudly than the rest of the ruckus in the building. “Ronan!”

All at once they froze in place, their minds gone blank from whatever their previous thoughts had been, those trains of thoughts completely discarded. Their gazes found each other, watching as all their eyes widened, each expression asking the same thing.

“Ronan, over here!”

They all spun. There, standing next to a table in the corner, was Declan.

It was definitely Declan, with the Lynch blue eyes and his wide smile and perfect teeth that said he knew he was the best thing in the building, but it was a version of Declan none of them recognized.

Sunburns reddened his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, a faded pink color that suggested he had had them for a while. He had allowed his hair to grow out and now the curls were slowly taking over in an invasion of twirls across his forehead and around his ears. His jeans were dark and expensive as usual, but they ended in a pair of glossed, leather boots instead of his glossed, leather Oxfords. Finally, he was wearing a dark red, button-down, plaid shirt. A plaid shirt. Plaid. _Plaid._

His eyes were bright and he smiled as he said, “About time you showed up. Where’ve you been?”

Ronan had never before felt such an extreme mixture of relief and rage come over him. “Where have I been?”

He was going to kill him. He was going to murder him right here in the middle of Nino’s. Matthew would understand.

Declan started laughing at him. “I was afraid you weren’t going to show.”

Ronan opened his mouth and heard his own voice, but he didn’t hear it come from him. He heard it from behind him.

“Now, why the hell would you think that?”

The four of them turned around and saw Ronan Lynch. Another Ronan Lynch, with the same Lynch eyes and a tilt to his grin that said he knew he was the most dangerous thing in the building.

Same leather bands on his wrists, same tattoo that they could all see peeking around his neck, same unapologetic stride as he made his way down the small walkway between the tables and toward them. Same smile, the one that only didn’t bite certain people.

This was a whole new level of an out-of-body experience that Ronan found he did not like at all. He stepped out of the way with Blue on one side, while Adam and Gansey jumped back on the other as the carbon copy creature walked in between them. They viewed it with the same level of hazard as they would a poison dart frog. None of them wanted to touch it.

With some struggle, they pulled their focus away from the thing and back to Declan—

—who brightened more and more the closer the fake Ronan got. At nearly the same moment, the two of them raised their fists and bumped them together. Ronan felt himself cringe as his brother made physical contact with the thing. The greeting didn’t end there, though. Several seconds of a well-practiced handshake went by, one that must have been done enough times to allow small talk while they did it. It was similar to the special handshake Ronan had taught Matthew a few years back, but not quite.

“It’s good to see you again,” Declan told the Ronan thing.

“You too.”

“You know, I remember a time when you used to run away from all the places I was at. I used to think you’d book a hotel just so I couldn’t find you.” He took one side of the table while the fake Ronan took the other.

“Come on, man. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

“Hmm, debatable.”

He laughed as the fake Ronan flicked a spoon at him.

Drinks were already at the table. Even from the distance, Ronan could recognize the one he always ordered. He watched, disturbed, as his doppelganger took a sip of that one.

Ronan shook himself out of his transfixed state before the others could and broke away from them. He ignored their calls for him to wait, to hold on a second, shrugging off one of their hands as they tried to grab his shoulder. He marched over, his stare flipping between the two of them as he stopped in front of the table.

“Thanks for dropping by on a dime, man,” the creature with his face said. The doppelganger’s eyes didn’t so much as flick in the real Ronan’s direction. “If we don’t patch up the chicken coop by tonight the foxes are gonna get to them.”

“Don’t mention it.” Declan’s eyes didn’t flick towards the real Ronan either. “Honestly, I would have taken any excuse to get away from the office. There’s this chick, Barb, driving me fucking _insane.”_

“You remember to bring the meshing for it?”

“ _You remember to bring the meshing for it?”_ Declan parroted in a higher-pitched version of Ronan’s raspy voice. “Of course I brought it. Stop doubting me. Have I ever forgotten anything? Ever? No? That’s what I thought, so shut up.” He took a satisfied sip of his drink.

“I keep telling you to leave that stick up your ass in D.C.” The doppelganger said. “You forgot that again.”

Declan didn’t stop sipping his drink and simply raised his middle finger with the same hand holding the glass. The doppelganger snorted.

“Declan?” Ronan snapped his fingers in between his brother and the thing that looked like him. When that showed no results, he clapped his hands together, once, loud enough to echo across the restaurant. “Declan!”

Declan Lynch gave no signs of hearing or seeing him. He merely leaned his elbows on the table and listened as the fake Ronan across from him began speaking, perfectly mimicking the sharp-edged, one-of-a-kind voice of Ronan himself. The doppelganger went on about some cop being a prick, that if wanted to get pulled over for speeding today then he would have done some real speeding and not some half-assed fifteen miles over the speed limit crap. Declan's eyes rolled right at the moment when the doppelganger mentioned a ticket.

"To add to your collection? You going for the Guinness Book of World Records?"

The doppelganger grinned wickedly as though to say _yes._

Declan sighed, but it sounded half-hearted at best, nothing like the sighs Ronan had grown up with. “It’s a miracle your car hasn’t been put in impound yet.”

He had one hand wrapped around the glass of his drink, holding it up with the straw close to his face and taking sips in between the conversation, but the other hand he had lied out on the table. Ronan hesitated, then threw that hesitation out the window and lurched forward to grab him. His fingers went right through his brother’s wrist.

* * *

“I’m just saying.” Declan put his drink down and held out his hands in a reasonable manner. For some reason, _reason_ seemed to trigger Ronan more than anything else. At his brother’s glare, Declan dropped his hands back to the table. “You can only get so many tickets before you have to go to court, and I’ve seen your door. You staple all of them to it.”

His brother grinned at him again.

“Aye yi yi.” He shook his head. “Not a good thing.”

“Depends on what you clarify as ‘good.’”

He grabbed his spoon and pointed at him with it. “Following the law.”

“That’s lawful good. Do I look like lawful good to you?”

He studied him. After a beat, he admitted, “Okay, fair point. How about me? Do I look like lawful good to you?”

“Lawful evil.”

“Hey.” Since Declan didn’t know how to flick a spoon the same way his brother had, he settled for waving it at him threateningly. “If I’m evil, then you have to be too.”

Ronan arched an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Wow. What a winning argument. Those suckers in D.C. don’t stand a chance.”

Declan tilted his head as he looked him up and down. “I’d peg you for chaotic evil, probably.”

“Matthew’s the only good one.” Ronan paused to take another sip. “Chaotic good, probably.”

“Speaking of Matthew, where the fuck is he?" He looked back the way Ronan had come, but no one else had come into the restaurant with him. "Weren't you supposed to drive him here?"

His brother shrugged. “Said a friend of his would take him.”

“Oh no.”

Ronan lowered his drink. “What?”

The older of the two Lynches had paled considerably. “No, no, no.”

“The hell is your problem?”

Declan surged up from the table. “Remember, he got his permit last week?”

“So? He knows he’s only supposed to drive with you, me, or Dad.”

“ _Does he?”_

A long pause filled the space at the table. The two brothers stared at each other, thinking, estimating the chances of the youngest Lynch remembering that very critical rule. He had been so excited when the lady at the DMV had handed him his driver’s permit, had been so excited even as Declan and Ronan had been clutching the door handles and screaming, _“_ Red light!”

Declan shoved a handful of cash at the waitress with the ponytail, yelling over his shoulder to keep the change as he and Ronan sprinted out of the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH. That was so much fun! I just love how I can write from Declan’s perspective like this now. It just—AH. Makes me so happy. 
> 
> And this makes the longest chapter thus far in the story! What did you think? Was it smooth or do you think it should have been broken up? Critique welcome, as always!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as I did!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	14. Restless

Adam could still hear Ronan shouting outside.

He shuffled his cards again, trying to ignore it. By Gansey's insistence, he had remained the last one in the kitchen. Meanwhile Gansey and Blue had chased after Ronan, who had kicked open the front door and had been spiraling out on the front lawn of 300 Fox Way ever since, unnerving the people who passed by walking their dogs. Residents of the Fox Way street were no strangers to the strange happenings of house 300, but seeing an over six-foot-tall, heavily tattooed man restraining himself from knocking over all the garbage bins on the side of the road scared off even their most tolerant of neighbors.

They had wanted to stay in Cabeswater, in the dream world that they had found Declan in. They had chased Declan and the otherworldly, Ronan lookalike out of the restaurant, where the two of them had jumped into a Volvo that had looked exactly like the one parked in the fields outside of Cabeswater, except without the coat of pollen.

Everything they had tried to touch turned out to be as tangible as a hologram. The restaurant’s door, the people, the vehicles outside. Everything went through them, or they went through it, as though either everyone around them was a ghost, or they were.

Then Declan had torn out of the parking lot with tires screeching, causing several cars also exiting the lot to jerk to a stop to avoid collision. The further the silver car had driven down the road, the more the world around them had begun to fade, until they had found themselves in a forest once more.

They had returned to Fox Way to regroup, to gather their wits, and to discuss whether or not medicating Ronan was necessary at this point.

After about ten minutes of conversing around the kitchen island, they had realized they could either let Ronan go and scream outside, or Fox Way would be patching up multiple holes in the kitchen walls.

For a long time running, Adam had been in the position of the go-to person to pull Ronan together. He had already begun standing up, ready to follow him outside when Gansey had jumped from his seat. “I’ll handle him,” he had told him, “You stay here and finish what you’re doing with these cards.”

If that hadn’t stung enough, even Blue had turned him down when he had started to protest.

“Leave Ronan to us.” She had a bite to her words as she then said, “I don’t think you’re in any place to make him feel better right now.”

“Find us a solution,” Gansey had added when he had taken in Adam’s expression. “Only you can communicate with someone who’s sleeping.”

Adam did not want to communicate with the person who was sleeping.

Perhaps it was because Adam was the only one of them who hadn’t grown up in a place that he could call a home, or grown with people who he could call a family. It was simply a place he had grown, and the people in it were simply people he had grown up in vicinity to.

For Gansey, he had his parents and his sister Helen. Blue had the giant, ever-expanding clan of women of Fox Way. Adam still didn’t think he had met all of the women Blue considered her family yet. Every time he visited, there was one more woman there, varying between the ages of eighteen to eighty, whom he did not recognize. Then there was Ronan, and although he no longer had his parents, he did have Matthew.

Ronan did not have Declan, and that was for one simple reason: he did not want him.

That wouldn’t stop Ronan from feeling something from Declan’s loss, however. They were bound by blood and childhood experiences. Ronan would feel the pain and panic of having something that was his taken from him, no matter how many times he had tried to get rid of it to begin with.

A crash sounded from outside, muffled through the walls of the house, and Adam tilted his good ear in the direction of it. The crash sounded of something heavy hitting the driveway. It sounded of Ronan succumbing to the urge to finally kick over those garbage bins.

Those bins didn’t belong to him. Adam didn’t look through the window to see, but he knew if he had been out there, he would have seen guilt on Ronan’s face. He would have seen Blue telling him it’s no big deal, it’s just trash. He would have seen Gansey trying to prevent him from doing it again. He would have seen Ronan struggling not to do it again.

Adam went for a sigh, but it came out as a grumble. He swept the cards together and headed for the former reading room.

He closed the door behind him, letting the room fall back into shadows. Only two lines of light penetrated the room, one from under the door behind him, the other from a crack in the curtains by the bed.

His eyes fell on the person on the bed, on the source of Ronan’s misery.

He tried to clear his head as he approached, shuffling the cards in his hands and filling his thoughts with _how do I wake you, how do I wake you, how do I wake you._ The closer he came to the bed, the angrier he felt. The more he tried to release the anger, the stronger it became.

The man in front of him, sleeping listlessly, had always been in the field of torturing Ronan, but this had taken it to a level too far for Adam to tolerate.

All Declan had to do was stay out of it. It was literally. All. He had. To do.

But he hadn’t. The urge to make his brother’s life hell had been too great.

“I hope you’re happy,” Adam whispered to him. “This time you really killed him.”

His hand began to warm from where he had been shuffling the cards. He stopped and pulled the card that had been cause of the warming sensation. He flipped it over.

A skull stared back at him, a crown atop its head.

_Death_

Adam didn’t know how to feel about that.

In very few cases did the Death card mean that by its literal definition. More often than not it signaled upcoming change, or that something needed to change. In this particular case, Adam thought that all three possibilities applied.

He looked Declan over, wondering what he was dreaming of, wondering what he was doing right at that moment while Adam stood beside him.

* * *

“Goddamn it, we really don't have time for this," Declan said, pulling the car over to the side of the road. He couldn't decide what to fret over first. The possibility of his little brother driving on the roads without proper guidance, or his own clean driving record in jeopardy. He eyed the police car in the rearview mirror as it parked behind him, its lights flicking off.

“No way! Is that the same prick from before?” Ronan turned around and gasped. “It IS, that JACKASS.”

“Don’t say anything. I can get us out of this.” No way was he losing his perfect record. That cop would have to pry it from his cold, dead hands.

Ronan saluted him. He pulled his seat way back, sinking down into it as though he could care less about the world around him. He crossed his arms to complete the picture, taking on the appearance of mute observer.

Declan nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent.”

Ronan grinned wickedly at him. “Do your thing, bro.”

A flick to one cuff, a flick to the other, and then a good pull of his shirt collar, and Declan became the smooth-talking politician of D.C. he wanted everyone to see. It was difficult to believe he was only an intern. He smoothed out his curls to the best of his abilities. Pleased with what he saw in the rearview mirror, he put on his poker face and began rolling down the window as the cop approached.

“Good morning, officer," he greeted as the cop came to a stop in front of his door. Declan leaned casually against it, smiling as though he knew the man personally. "What seems to be the problem?"

The cop looked right through him. It was as though Declan hadn’t said anything at all as the man eyed Ronan in the passenger seat with a frown.

“I see it runs in the family.”

_Bitch, what did you just—_

Declan cleared his throat, and his mind, before speaking again. “Is there a reason you pulled us over today, sir?”

Instead of answering, the cop narrowed his eyes. He raised a gloved finger and moved it between them. “Which of you two is the older one?”

Declan gaped at him.

Ronan wheezed, accidentally breaking character. He smothered his face in the crook of his arm, trying to hide it, but it didn't really work, not when Declan could see his shoulders shaking in his peripheral vision.

“I am, officer,” he said, a little more saltily than he would have liked towards someone threatening him with a ticket. He took a breath and reminded himself that the cop wasn’t trying to insult him or anything, he was merely performing his duties thoroughly.

The cop didn’t even have the nerve to look convinced at his answer.

“How much older?”

Declan took it back. The cop was insulting him.

“A year!” he snapped.

Ronan interjected, lifting his head from his arm. “Ten months!”

Declan gave a growl and pushed him out of the conversation. “Eleven months!”

“Don’t even.” Ronan shoved him back, cackling. “Ten months and a week!”

“ _Two weeks!”_

“Twelve days doesn’t make two weeks, bro.”

“ _Just round it up!”_

“Alrighty, boys. Listen here.” The cop leaned a forearm against the roof of the vehicle. Declan visibly bristled with the knowledge that the bastard was touching his car. “Just ‘cause you have your licenses, don’t mean you know all there is about driving. It’s clear to me that you’re both still learning to drive, so I’m going to let you off this time with a lil’ warning.”

“ _Learning_ to drive!?” Declan rounded on the cop, snarling. “I could drive goddamn _circles_ around you!”

He got the ticket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mini chapter! I couldn’t help it. I really wanted to squeeze that scene in there somewhere. Enjoy!
> 
> And heads up! The next chapter is a monster, so it might take a little bit longer to complete. I’m very excited to post it though, so I want it to be perfect!
> 
> Have a Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	15. Until The Summer Solstice

“Alright, so...” Gansey folded his hands together and pressed them to his lips. “There are some complications.”

Blue didn’t look up from where she had her face pressed to the table’s surface.

A few feet away, Adam was flipping through book after book, leaving little pieces of paper and candy wrappers as bookmarks before pulling another one from the shelves. A circle of candles surrounded him and smoke billowed up from no less than three sources of sage and incense. He had a variety of plants and crystals placed into some sort of pattern across the table’s surface. He looked them over, reading something that none of the other three could see. Even Blue wasn’t entirely certain of what he was doing.

“You know how Noah died for Cabeswater, but he still got to stay on the physical plane with us?” He asked without looking up.

“You mean how he was killed for Cabeswater,” Blue corrected, turning her head to the side so she wouldn't be speaking directly into the table, “but, yeah. Why?”

“And I gave up my hands and eyes, but then I became psychic.”

Gansey gave him an inquisitive look. “I’d much prefer not to recall those particular events, but, yes, we remember. What does this have to do with…” Gansey gave a sad look over to where Declan rested. “Our dear friend here?”

Adam finally closed the book and looked at them both. “Don’t you get it? It’s a trade. He gives up his physical life in exchange for whatever Cabeswater created for him. That’s why there was another Ronan. That Ronan was a part of the deal.”

“But why would he do that to himself? I know him, and that simply isn’t something he would do. And Ronan? And Matthew?” Gansey shook his head with a near pained expression, one that normally only surfaced when someone misquoted Glendower to him. “He wouldn’t just leave them. Think about it. How many times did we have to redirect him because he wouldn't leave Ronan alone? That was a full-time job."

“Yeah, I remember,” Blue said. “You’d use me as an excuse. ‘Don’t start a fight now, there’s a lady present.’” She gave an eye roll.

Gansey held out his hands sympathetically. “Sorry, Jane. You were our best line of defense.”

“We don’t have to know why he did it, Gansey,” Adam told him as he picked up another book and began vigorously flipping through that one. “We just have to know what he traded. Maybe then Cabeswater will let us trade it back.”

Blue sat herself up, pressing a fist into her cheek as she thought. “Is that something Cabeswater would do, though?”

“Dunno. Worth a shot.”

“He gave up his physical life, didn’t he?” Gansey asked. “For a life in Cabeswater. That’s the trade.”

“If that were the case, he’d already be dead.” Adam frowned down at the pages he read, placed the book aside and selected another. “He gave up something here, in the real world, to have something there, in Cabeswater.”

“That is a terrible trade," Blue said. “Why would he want to trade a real life for a phoney, fake one with fake people? He got gypped.”

“Cabeswater doesn’t gyp people, Blue. You know that,” Adam said a little defensively.

“How else do you explain it?” she argued. “No way would someone kill themselves over a fake version of what they already have. It’s like asking someone if they want to go on a _real_ roller coaster or one of those virtual fake ones with the shakey chairs. Only difference is, if you want the virtual ride, price of admission is death.”

“He could be confused,” Gansey considered. “Maybe he thinks that fake Ronan is the real Ronan. He could have no idea he’s actually asleep right now.”

“So, what you’re saying is that he’s in the Matrix,” she said.

“Cabeswater doesn’t lie,” Adam reminded them. “He would have to have known all the terms and conditions before making the sacrifice.”

“Fantastic. Now we're back at square one again." Blue picked up one of the multiple empty mugs decorating the table. She frowned into its empty center. "There's not enough caffeine in the world for this."

Gansey rubbed the back of his neck in silent agreement to that. “That still doesn’t explain why he can’t see us. We were all in Cabeswater with him. Even if he is only a spirit right now, he should have known we there. Right?” He looked to Blue.

“Even more so,” she told him, “if he’s only a spirit. You know how sensitive spirits are, outside their physical form?” She waved a hand at Declan, utterly frustrated with him. “He should have known we were there before even _we_ knew he was there.”

“Was he just ignoring us then?” Adam pondered, in a tone that suggested that wouldn’t have surprised him. Declan had done petty things for less.

Even so, Gansey made a face. “He’s a good actor, but he’s not that good.”

“Maybe that’s a part of the deal?” Blue asked next. “That he has no interaction with the physical world anymore?”

“Again,” Gansey said, staring at the wall ahead, too deep in thought now to meet anyone’s gaze, “why would he do that? That’s just not something Declan would do.”

“Who cares about the _why?”_ Adam asked again.

A loud crash sounded from the kitchen. Since it didn’t suggest of a broken object or wounded wall, none of them stood to investigate, but they all cringed at the impact they heard nonetheless.

Blue frowned in the direction of the door. She gave glimpses at the other two in the room. “We don’t have to worry about the cars, do we?”

Wordlessly, Gansey and Adam held up the keys to the Pig and the BMW, respectively. Blue too pulled out her own keys from her pocket, proof of her membership of their little club, and twirled it around a finger.

“Okay, good,” she said.

"He can't hotwire a car, can he?” Gansey looked over at Adam worriedly, who shrugged.

“I’ve never taught him.”

“Never,” Gansey said, “teach him that.”

The door flew open and smacked against the wall. Even that jarring noise, sending vibrations through the floor that they could all feel through their shoes, did not obtain so much as a stir from the sleeper in the room.

“Did you see it? That thing had my face!”

“We all saw, Ronan,” Blue reminded him.

Ronan purposely bumped into her chair as he walked into the room. Blue, with her feet not able to reach the floor, clutched onto the table edge to keep from toppling out of her chair. She vehemently ripped out one of her barrettes and flung it at him.

“Both of you,” Gansey said lackadaisically, still staring off at the wall. “Let’s try to be civil.”

He squinted in mild pain as a barrette pinged off his forehead.

“How is he?” Ronan asked, glancing at the person sleeping away on the bed. He walked over and pulled open the curtains, but the person did not stir.

While reading, Adam answered, “The same.”

Although he didn’t look up from his book, Adam could feel Gansey and Blue's combined stare of disapproval.

He took a deep enough breath for those two to know how annoyed he was with them, snapped his book shut and told Ronan, “He’s fine. Whatever he’s dreaming, it must be good because he’s only been happy since he’s been here.”

Several times while in the room Adam had caught signs of frustration and exasperation in the field surrounding Declan’s sleeping form, but the underlying layer of content never wavered.

“Well.” Ronan leaned back against the window, hands in his pockets and gaze on the floor. With his back to the light, all of his features were marred by shadow, a dark entity hovering by his brother. “At least there’s that.”

The three others in the room shared aching looks. Blue quickly searched the table for anything to offer.

“And the cards?” She stood up from her chair, leaning on the table to see the collection of cards across from her.

Adam had long since shuffled Death back into the deck, but he allowed her to see the next most prominent card he’d been dealing with in the past hour. He flipped it over from its place in the center of the assortment decorating the table’s surface. Even before he revealed it, he already knew what card it was going to be.

“Three of Swords,” Blue said, eyeing the heart with the three swords stabbed right through it. Although not psychic herself, she had grown up with tarot cards, had chewed on them when she was two. She recognized the meaning behind it and frowned.

“It’s been coming up a lot.” Adam picked up the card gingerly.

Heartache, hurt feelings and cruel and cutting words came through his fingertips. He felt his own heart ache in response, mirroring the person coming through the card, but was the person Declan or was it Ronan?

“It means communication is needed,” he explained simply.

“What kind?” she asked.

Adam looked down at the card unhappily. It felt heavy, heavier than it should have been for a card, in his hands.

“Not the easy kind.” He placed it down, not wanting to feel it anymore. Even without the contact, he could still feel it anyway. “Get everything out in the air, lay it all out on the table kind of communication.”

Adam watched as everyone in the room made a face simultaneously. That kind of communication, with Declan and Ronan as the communicators, would usually involve broken plates and many kinds of profanity.

Gansey pressed a thumb to his lip. “So, what it’s saying is to stab right into the heart of the problem.”

“Well, that’s the cliché way of looking at it,” Blue told him, grinning to herself when she saw the obvious offense Gansey took to that. “But yeah, you got it.”

“Well, that’d be all fine and dandy except that would never fucking work even if we _could_ talk to each other.” Ronan sunk into the cushioned chair next to the bed, the same chair he had dragged over the first night. Seemingly without thinking it, he took ahold of Declan’s wrist as he told the others, “He can’t see me, he can’t hear me. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“We need a bridge.” Adam stood up and swept together the cards in a few easy movements. He left out Three of Swords and stored that one in the pocket of his cargo pants instead. “Something to allow communication to come through.”

“What kind of bridge are we talking about here?” Gansey knew Adam didn’t mean an actual bridge but all that he could imagine was a wooden drawbridge most likely last used sometime in the late 1500s.

“I was thinking the picture. That’s the bridge he used to get his spirit into Cabeswater. I don’t see why we can’t use it to contact him. Ronan, you still have it?”

“No, I tossed it out with the rest of my cheeseburger,” he said, thick with sarcasm as he rummaged in his pocket and plucked out the folded piece of paper. He held it gently, but he refused to unfold it before handing it over to Adam. He had already seen it once. He didn’t need to see it again.

“I’d be surprised if this didn’t work at least a little bit.” Adam placed it in his other pocket, opposite to the one with the Three of Swords. “I don’t know what will happen, but if we can at least give him a sign that we’re trying to contact him, he can help us out.”

“You know Declan,” Gansey said, nodding to himself as he thought, “If we can let him know something's amiss, he'll jump on it.”

“It’d definitely be a lot easier if he actually knew what we were trying to do,” Blue said.

“Then why are we still here talking about it?” Ronan rose from the chair. “Move your asses, let’s go.”

As they all turned to file out of the room, Ronan paused long enough to brush his hand over his brother’s hair.

Cabeswater wasn’t any different when they arrived. The Volvo, every day looking a little less silver and a little more pollen yellow, greeted them on the outside the forest. The trees, singing Latin praises, greeted them on the inside.

_Lorem ipsum dolor sit!_

_Nos sunt ita beatus est, ut te videre!_

(Welcome!

We are so happy to see you!)

“Where’s my brother,” Ronan demanded.

_Non longe!_

_Non longe ad omnes._

_Ipse est in eius somnium, ut semper._

(Not far!

Not far at all.

He resides in his dreams, as always.)

Ronan ignored that last part and told the others, “I don’t think he’s in an actual place. I think if we keep moving we’ll just bump into him again like last time.”

"The simpler, the better." Gansey eyed the woods ahead. His gaze was hard, but he gave the forest a small smile. “Excelsior.”

Sure enough, the further they ventured, the more the forest began to morph. For ten minutes they traveled through bushes and stepped over branches, and on the eleventh minute, they found themselves stepping over a lawn they all recognized with differing degrees of propinquity. Fields of endless green grass surrounded them on all sides, vibrant in color and haphazardly clipped around their ankles.

The Barns sat tall and proud up ahead, as though it had been there the whole time.

Ronan practically hissed at it.

They made their way up the driveway, all unnerved by the familiar crunch of gravel beneath their feet, Ronan especially. The thick scent of hay, the buzz of insects, and the precisely correct type of flowers in the window boxes all rang of deeply rooted memories that Ronan knew did not belong here. He glimpsed uneasily at his plum tree, noticing that many of the lower hanging branches were bare, as though people had been eating them.

“What kind of fuckery is this?” Ronan recognized the gutter with a break in it, the gutter he had never fixed because a bird had made its nest up there and he didn’t want to disturb it. That same nest was there now, the same size and shape as the one at his own Barns.

How, Ronan wondered, if the place was created from Declan’s imagination, would Declan even know of all these details? He never spent enough time at the Barns to create such an accurate image, with the broken gutter, the exact place that Ronan always left the hose, and the half-finished wall of the shed that he had been re-painting.

Ronan was nearly certain that Declan had not visited the Barns since Ronan had started painting that shed.

Adam shook his head as he looked around. “I don’t like this.”

“The hair is standing up on the back of my neck,” Blue whispered.

Gansey held up a hand and raised the other to his lips. “Shh.”

In turn, they all came to realize the shouting coming from beyond the front of the mansion.

They glanced at each other, then at the Barns, straining to hear through the squall of birds and insects filling the fields.

Unable to differentiate the words, Gansey waved for them to keep moving in that direction. They crept up along the side of the mansion, close to the wall as made their way towards the back.

“The patio,” Ronan whispered, eyes narrowing as he stared towards the back of the house. “It’s gotta be from here.”

“Then we go to the patio,” Gansey said.

They picked up on Declan’s voice before they picked up on his words.

“—absolute piece of shit! How many times do I have to tell you this?” They all recognized that tone instantaneously. It was the tone he had always used with all of them, only at varying levels. At the moment, the level was very high. “You tell me, how many times? Or do you never listen? Does nothing I say get through to you?”

Since no one else had pointed it out yet, Blue said, “Well, he’s pissed.”

Ronan imagined his doppelganger there, imitating the usual fights he would have with Declan. They could range from simple screaming matches to full-blown fistfights.

They turned the corner and, sure enough, Declan was there with the replica of Ronan.

The fake Ronan sat crossed-legged on the concrete of the patio, guarded against the sunshine by the overhang, stapling some meshing to a wooden board. Declan sat beside him.

“Every time! Every goddamn time!” Declan had some kind of giant scissors in his gloved hands and was cutting away at his own piece of meshing, his expression furious. "Over, over, and over. This one time, I wanted to grab this new intern and say, 'Watch this, Jack.' I don't even know what his name is, but that's what I would have said. I would have said that I could predict the fucking future and that when I asked Barb for the papers again, she would say, 'What papers?' Oh, only the same God-forsaken papers _I’ve been telling you to complete every single day this week._ ‘What papers?’ The hell you mean, _what papers?_ What other papers are there? I assign all her tasks! Where are these secret papers that I don’t know about? Are you working on those when I’m not here instead of the ones with the fucking deadlines? If I have to ask Mark for another damn extension he is going to be _pissed._ ”

Ronan's doppelgänger continued his stapling, not looking up nor commenting. Declan appeared unbothered by this and continued cutting away at his own meshing, occasionally lifting the hand without the scissors to make grand gestures. He glanced at the fake Ronan as though to check if he were still listening, and even though it clearly looked like he wasn’t, Declan seemed to think otherwise and went back to his cutting and rambling.

“I don’t remember him...” Adam began uncertainly, but since he had already started, he finished, “being this talkative.”

“No, he was,” Ronan said, watching his brother. Old memories of lectures, rants, and screaming matches flitted through his head. “Just not like this.”

“Jesus, take a breath before you pop something, Deck.” The doppelgänger clanked his stapler against the scissors Declan held, effectively shutting him up, at least for the moment.

Ronan bristled. He had never picked out a nickname for his older brother. Well, not one that he could have said around his mother. The idea that someone _else_ had in his place struck him as a direct threat, some little fucktwit imposter thinking he go ahead and decide what Declan should be called.

Adam, then Blue, and finally Gansey all noticed Ronan and side-stared uneasily at the expression that had taken over his face.

“You’re getting yourself all spun up again,” the doppelgänger continued.

To that, Declan squinted at him. “I am not.”

Using the stapler again, the doppelgänger made a circular motion at him. “Your face is turning all red.”

Declan used his scissors to make his own circular motion that pointed off in some random direction. “That’s just from the humidity,” he said flippantly. “It’s Virginia, it’s hot.”

“You’re full of shit,” the doppelgänger murmured, but before Declan could start arguing that, the doppelgänger said, “Here, try to take your mind off things.”

The lookalike of Ronan reached to drag over a boombox from where it had been shoved underneath the nearby table. He pressed a few buttons and a moment later, the patio came alive with the screech of electronica.

Declan cringed enough to drop the scissors.

“Oh no!” He shouted over it and smacked fake Ronan’s hand away from the buttons.

The doppelgänger hissed from the pain of the thick gloves, then turned that hiss on Declan as though he planned to bite him.

Declan wasn’t intimidated in the slightest and hit the off button. “How do you stomach that? That’s like audio torture.”

The doppelgänger snickered. “It’s better than your shit musicals.”

“Okay, first of all, how dare you.”

He poised the stapler at him. “You put Singin’ In The Rain in again and I cannot guarantee I won’t stab you.”

Ronan stared at his brother with disconcertion. “Singin’ In The Rain?”

“That is a classic so you can just fuck off with your poor music preferences,” Declan shot back. Although Declan only spoke to the doppelgänger, Ronan couldn’t help but feel like that was directed towards him as well.

His fingers twitched, wanting badly to respond back with something that Declan wouldn’t be able to hear.

“Musicals aren’t even real music.”

“ _Music_ is literally in its name, you asshat.”

Hesitantly, Gansey whispered to Ronan, “You guys don’t normally talk like this.”

“We don’t ever talk like this,” he corrected. The exchange was still going.

“Who, under the age of _fifty,_ even listens to that shit in the twenty-first century?”

“ _Me.”_

“You don’t count.”

“And why the fuck not?”

“You think shopping for ties and scented candles is a fun way to spend your free time.”

“What’s wrong with scented candles?”

“And you see, you just proved my point.”

“I didn’t prove shit! Look me in the eye and tell me what’s wrong with my candles.”

“Everything’s wrong with your candles, Declan.”

“You know what, I’m just going to take all my candles with me back to D.C. and you can just sit here and enjoy breathing in your damn Febreeze because you clearly don’t deserve Autumn Caramel Apple Pie scented _anything.”_

“Or you can come out and breathe some _fresh air_ for a change.”

“You’re such a caveman, who even breathes ‘fresh air’ anymore?” Declan said with air quotations.

A ringtone interrupted them then, something chipper and bubbly and stopping their exchange from going on for some unforeseeable amount of time. They turned their heads in the direction of the beaten-up, wooden table, where a perfect replica of Ronan’s black iPhone had its screen lit up.

“For the love of God.” Declan groaned, glaring at the source of the music while the doppelgänger glared at him from the side of his eyes. “This is the third time your boyfriend’s called you today.”

Adam went to say something to Ronan, but the expression on Ronan’s face was answer enough.

Ronan had never told his older brother about that. He had never actually told anyone. Gansey, Adam, and Blue had just sort of voicelessly figured it. He would never allow _Declan_ , of all damn people, the chance to figure it out. He had no idea how well he would take it, but given his brother’s track record, it wouldn’t have been well at all.

Except...Declan seemed fine. The only thing that he didn’t seem fine about was the break in their conversation.

Ronan’s lookalike stood from his place and went over to grab the phone. He hit “Answer” but before he could lift it to his ear, Declan jumped up beside him and shouted, “Fuck off, Adam! You’re flying here this weekend!”

“Huh?”

“Hi, Mom, I love you!”

“Oh! Hi, baby. I love you too!”

Declan took a deep breath and backed away.

The doppelgänger cackled gleefully before placing the phone to his ear. “Hey, Mom.”

Declan stared his brother’s lookalike down with a glare until the lookalike noticed and kicked him in the calf. With an impressive look of offense, Declan kicked him back, then danced out of reach before the doppelgänger could retaliate.

Ronan’s lookalike held up a middle finger in what must have been the most Ronan-ish action they had seen the doppelgänger perform yet. In complete opposition, Declan wiggled his fingers at him in the most un-Declan-ish action they had ever seen, flashing a victorious smile that clearly said, _Ha ha, you can’t get me—_

And then he shrieked as the lookalike chucked a large measuring tape directly at his head. Declan dodged it, barely.

Although the tape would have likely flown right through them all, the four spectators on the patio ducked and jumped as the item zipped in between them with the ferocity of a bullet.

Gansey turned his head to watch as the common construction tool bounced off somewhere in the grass behind them, then moved his focus to Adam. "Parrish." He nodded at Declan, who had returned to the tools he had left on the patio floor. "Now would be a good time."

Declan was muttering something indiscernible under his breath as he pulled together the pieces of wood and the halfway connected meshing. He walked over to the table, giving the lookalike a little glare that was a lot more exasperation than the rage Ronan was typically accustomed to, and lied out the pieces on the table. He searched around the tabletop for the tools he needed, a scene that echoed of similarity to earlier that morning, except with materials of metal and wood as opposed to tarot and candles.

Adam pulled out the picture and unfolded it as he approached. He stopped with less than a foot of distance between them, holding up the picture in one hand and reaching out to touch Declan with the other. His fingers hovered above his shoulder.

“Declan,” he called to him.

When Declan gave him no response and only continued to cut through the meshing, Adam closed his eyes. For a long moment, he held his position, focusing, and then he leaned forward. His fingers slipped through Declan’s shoulders like a mirage.

Adam opened his eyes and jolted at what he saw, transfixed on where his fingers floated in Declan’s shoulder. He moved his fingers experimentally through what should have been the fabric of Declan's shirt, his flesh, and bone. He pulled his hand back out slowly.

“Well, that’s different.” He shook his hand out before offering the picture to Ronan. “Maybe it needs to be from someone he’s already connected to?”

Ronan came over and grabbed it, keeping the front of the picture faced away from him. He didn’t know what Adam had done to focus, didn’t know what to focus on, so he skipped ahead to reaching out his hand. Again, his hand passed through Declan.

In a dejected voice, he said, “Come on, man.”

“So how come Mom called?” Declan asked as the doppelgänger put down the phone.

“She forgot to pick up groceries before her and Dad left town. The list is on the counter.” The lookalike grabbed the scissors from Declan’s hand and pointed at the house with it. “I’ll finish this here. You go do that.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes on his older brother, waiting for his reaction.

“Sure,” Declan said, already unstrapping his gloves. “You want me to pick you up anything on the way back?”

That was not the correct reaction.

“What the _fuck?_ ” Ronan stared at his brother in abject betrayal. If Ronan had told him what to do, he would have been told to fuck off and get the groceries himself

Adam looked away, not saying anything.

“Whatever.” The doppelgänger gave a dismissive wave, mind focused on the pieces of wood covering the table. “Just haul it so we can get this thing put up before we fucking die of heat exposure.”

“See! I told you it was hot. Look, even your face is red. I win!” Declan threw the gloves onto the table. “I’m kind of in the mood for pizza?”

The doppelgänger wrinkled his nose. “Not feeling it.”

“Well then what _are_ you feeling?”

“Not that.”

Declan grumbled as he picked up a few tools from where they had been working on the floor. “I swear to God, some days you’re as bad as Ashley.”

“For every time you compare me to her again I shall break one of your fingers.”

Declan threw a hand up. “Then don’t give me reasons to compare! Just pick an establishment!”

“Fine. Get subs then.”

“Like Subway or the ones from the sub house?”

“Sub house.”

“Alright, I’ll be back.” Declan bounded up the stairs to the backdoor. He paused before turning the knob, grinning down at him as he said, “Try not to stab yourself while I’m gone.”

The doppelgänger smiled much more widely than Ronan thought the comment warranted. “No promises.”

Declan allowed himself a small eye roll, probably the most docile eye roll Ronan had ever seen him give, before disappearing behind the kitchen door.

The copy of Ronan looked up and smiled in the direction Declan had left in, his grin becoming softer. Even with Declan not there to see it, the dream creation of his younger brother actively showed affection for him. He merely stood there for a few moments of quiet and stillness, most likely thinking of how much he loved his older brother, if dream things like him thought at all. He turned around then, still smiling, and grabbed Ronan's throat.

He still smiled, but it wasn’t the same anymore.

Ronan heard the voices of his friends shouting as he was thrown into one of the pillars holding up the overhang. The fingers around his throat didn’t let go.

“It’s unfair, really," the fake Ronan told him. It moved its face in so close their noses nearly touched. "I make the rules here and you can't do shit. So sad."

Ronan went to punch the thing upside the jaw. The instant before his knuckles connected, however, the pressure on his neck evaporated. It wasn't that the hand holding him had released, but that it had become nonexistent aside from the visual aspects. Ronan felt his airway open up right as his fist passed through the dream thing's face as though the thing had become a hologram.

The creature took a step back, cackling. "Close! I almost felt that one!"

Adam and Blue ran to Ronan’s side and caught him as he stumbled back, but Gansey stepped into the dream thing's path. He looked furious. "So you can see us."

“Of course I can, you dumb fucks.” The thing’s smile had stretched excessively wide, to the point that Ronan placed a hand on his own face, imagining the pain of what doing that to his face would feel like. “I control this part of Cabeswater. This is my world.”

“Why can’t Declan see me?” Ronan demanded. He pushed past the efforts of all three levels of his friends to reach the thing, but once he did, his hand went right through the creature again, just as it had with Declan.

The dream thing looked so smug as Ronan snatched his hand back, disgusted.

“Because I don’t want him to,” the thing told him simply.

Ronan had never hated anything as much as he hated the thing he stared at now. He felt as though he would combust with the amount that filled him.

Gansey placed a hand on his shoulder and tugged him back, not trusting the creature in front of them. “Why are you holding him captive?”

“ _Captive!?”_ They all cringed as the thing started cackling again, a twisted, altered version of Ronan’s own laugh. “Bitch, does he look _captive_ to you?”

“Stockholm’s Syndrome doesn’t count,” Gansey replied icily. “If he can’t leave that labels him a hostage.”

The creature’s face twisted up into something similar to a canine. It spat at him and Gansey flinched as it landed on his shoes.

“You’re not nearly as smart as you like to think you are, Gansey—He chose to be here. To be with _me,_ specifically." The dream thing gave a complacent shake of his shoulders. “He was practically _begging_ to get into this place. You should have seen the look on his face. He just looked so sad without me. The poor thing. He really is so depressed on his own, you know? And kind of helpless. God, I just don’t _know_ how he made it so long on his own. Thank _God_ he found me or heaven _knows_ what would have happened to him.”

“Shut up." Ronan struggled against the combined efforts of Adam and Blue. The only reason they could fathom that Gansey didn't offer to help was that Gansey looked to be considering more physical options as well. "Just shut up!"

“ _Relax,”_ thing told him in a very unrelaxing manner. “Can’t you see I’m taking _such_ good care of him?”

“Enough of this.” Gansey made his decision and stepped directly in front of Ronan, blocking his path to the doppelgänger. Gansey, however, was beginning to look rather lethal himself as he matched the creature’s gaze. “Does Declan understand what’s going on, or is this all some grand illusion you’ve pulled on him?”

“Oh, my Declan knows the rules. He knows the terms and conditions and he’s _accepted them._ He’s free to leave at any time," the thing paused then, purposely, for effect, for the chance to have Gansey watch his smile spread when he said, "while he's still alive."

The thing looked pleased with itself as Ronan tried to lunge at him. Adam’s and Blue’s shoes dragged across the concrete.

“Touch him,” Ronan spat, “And I’ll drag your bleeding corpse behind the back of my car.”

“Oh, _I’m_ not going to do anything.” The thing placed a hand on his chest, as though what Ronan had just suggested was absurd. “That’s Cabeswater’s job. We just have to wait a few more weeks until summer.”

“What happens in summer?” Adam asked suspiciously.

“Well, _shit,_ you don’t _know?”_ The thing tilted his head with a look of genuine surprise that none of them trusted to be genuine at all. “Cabeswater’s not strong enough to _completely_ kill him. You know, _yet._ But it’s been saving up. The solstice will be _just_ the boost it needs to suck every last drop out of him. And then once his body’s dead and decomposing, well, he won’t be able to change his mind _then_ , now will he?”

Blue squealed and Adam yelped as they fell over, losing their grip on Ronan. He ran right through the creature and hit the wall as he tried to turn around. The thing laughed merrily, clapping its hands.

“Tick, tock, motherfucker, you have till the end of spring!”

Gansey approached the thing slowly, stopping right in front of it. The creature smiled at him as though wondering what he might try to do.

“You think you’ve won—” he began.

The creature interjected with a husky, “That’s because I have.”

Gansey ignored that. "But once Declan realizes we're here, he's not going to stay with you. No matter how nice you make this place for him, it won't make you any more real. He'll choose his real brother over a replica any day."

The doppelgänger’s expression became so hideous that Adam and Blue scrambled to pull their friend back before the thing could do something they couldn’t repair.

“You only wish that were the case,” it hissed.

“We’re gonna get my brother back, and once we do,” Ronan said, circling to face his doppelganger with his own hideous expression. “then I’m going to come back here and take you apart.”

The thing looked off to the side to chuckle, as though Ronan was too ridiculous to look at directly. “And how are you going to do that, hm? With this?”

Ronan had forgotten that he was still holding the picture until the thing seized it from his hand.

“A for effort,” the fake him said, holding out the picture in the palm of his hand, as though offering it back. The picture burst into flames.

The fire devoured it within seconds. The doppelgänger didn’t move even as the fire flickered and sputtered all over its hand. It even held up it for them to see, letting the paper seize up and blacken in its palm. When the fire had died away, the thing blew the ashes at its guest, grinning.

“Ta-da,” it whispered. It straightened up and clapped the ashes off its hands, saying, “It’s a shame I can’t show Declan all of my cool tricks.”

Ronan tried not to let what just happened get to him. He could see the horrified expressions of his friends in his peripheral vision and was trying hard not to have one to match. “I seriously doubt some damn picture is the only way to get to him.”

The thing shook from all its giggling.

“The hell if there even is another way, he’s made his _choice._ You might as well go home and start putting together the casket now, asshole. Declan’s never going to leave this place. He’s never going to _want_ to leave this place. Why would he? He’s got everything! He’s got _me._ ”

An unhinged, broken light had entered the thing’s eyes, and its otherwise stark resemblance to Ronan had everyone stumbling back from the disturbance of it.

The thing reveled in their reactions. It laughed harder. “Don’t you get it? His corpse is already growing cold! He’ll be dead by the end of spring! He’ll be all mine! No, wait, what am I saying? _He’s already mine!”_ The thing’s laughter had grown a closer resemblance to screeching. _“HE’S MINE!”_

“Ronan?”

The four of them would have froze if they hadn’t been frozen already. Only their eyes moved, their gazes shifting to the house, where Declan’s voice carried through the walls. Heavy footsteps followed.

“Aw, damn,” the doppelgänger whispered with mock disappointment. It winked at Ronan. “Maybe we can finish this next time? You know, before summer? I imagine you won’t have much reason to visit _then._ HAHAHAHA.”

The backdoor flew open and smacked into the wall.

“Just what are you doing out here?” Declan held up an arm in question. “Some kind of fucked-up Irish jigs?”

When Ronan looked back at the doppelgänger, he found the distorted expressions and the odd light in its eyes long gone. It looked very much how Ronan himself would look on any given day.

The creature in question shrugged. “Damn, bro. Judgemental, much?”

“It sounded like you were trying to summon demons.”

“Very judgemental, then.” The doppelgänger crossed his arms and leaned back against the table casually. “I thought I told you to go get groceries.”

Declan held up a pair of keys that were pinched between his fingers and thumb. “Turns out you need these to start a car.”

The doppelgänger eyed the keys with mischief. “Not if you hotwire it.”

Declan shrugged and spun the keys around his finger. “Guess I’m not as cool as your boyfriend.”

“Of course not.”

“That was a _joke._ ” Declan shook his head, exasperated. “Is there anyone else out here? I thought I heard voices,” he said, even as he glanced around the area doubtfully. His gaze went right through everyone, except the doppelgänger. “It sounded like a lot of yelling.”

Ronan spun on the doppelgänger. “He can hear us?”

His lookalike ignored him. “You’re so paranoid.”

Declan instantly bristled. “I am not paranoid.”

The thing grinned. “Also triggered.”

“I am not!” The older Lynch looked to be struggling to keep a calm composure. "And it's not called being _paranoid,_ it’s called being cau—”

“Paranoid.”

Declan made a strained noise and held up his hands in a representation of strangling the thing.

The doppelgänger laughed, a laugh very much like Ronan’s and not all like the animalist screeching from before. “Come on, man. I mean, do you see anybody else out here?”

It was a taunt meant specifically for Ronan, for it waved a hand directly at him.

Declan glanced around the patio, just to check. “No.”

“Then what do you think?”

The real Ronan watched as the fake version of himself basically made all Declan’s doubts, worries, and suspicions disappear before his very eyes like it was a magic trick. He could see the spaces on Declan’s face that would normally hold shadows of concern, but there was nothing there now.

“Yeah, okay.” Declan smiled, looking relieved and happy and many other emotions Ronan didn’t recognize on him. “Just wanted to make sure. Guess I’ll see you later?”

“Hey, you know what? I’ll come with you.”

Declan visibly brightened. “Great! We can get lunch first then. But what about the chicken coop?”

To Declan, the dream thing waved a dismissive hand at their half-finished project. To everyone else on the patio, the thing waved a dismissive hand at them.

“Not important,” it said.

The thing clearly wasn’t talking about the chicken coop.

It waltzed up to Declan at a leisurely pace. “You want to drive or me?”

Declan didn't start walking until the dream thing had passed him and headed inside the house. Only then did he turn around and follow it. “I’ll let you decide,” Declan said, handing him the keys.

Ronan began screaming. Adam grabbed onto his arm to keep him from spinning around the room and kicking at objects that his foot would only sink right through. His older brother never let him decide anything. Declan had pulled the custody card on him until the day Ronan had turned eighteen and been given his free will. The only times Ronan had gotten away with his own choices had been when Declan had realized there was no way he was going to change his mind and had given in.

It was clear that in this world, though, "Ronan" made the decisions.

And if this was Declan’s world, that must have been what Declan had wanted.

* * *

Declan and Ronan had a system when it came to driving.

Before, Declan would be the sole driver when they were in the same vehicle together. This was because they seldom ever were in a car together, and if they were, it was the Volvo. The BMW belonged to Ronan, and anything in his possession automatically created a ten-foot barrier that Declan could not cross.

Anyone with a sense of survival would understand that Ronan’s things were not to be meddled with, but for Declan in particular, the threat was doubled. Add that to the fact that the BMW had been passed down from their father, the threat was tripled. Once that car had been in his brother’s possession, Declan had thought he’d never again see the interior.

That was fine, he had told himself at the time. Fine, let Ronan have the BMW, even though _technically,_ it should have been passed down to the oldest son, which was Declan. Or at least passed down to the only son legally allowed to drive at the time. Which was Declan.

He supposed it didn’t matter. Their father would have wanted to pass down his beloved car to Ronan and Ronan only. Ronan was his favorite, that was never going to change, but Declan found he didn't mind as much as he used to. These days, he almost didn't mind at all. Only on rare occasions did the feeling make a resurgence, but he easily ignored it. Ronan might have been their father’s favorite, but Declan was Ronan’s favorite. That was way more important.

Besides, he had ended up with his Volvo because of it. When Ronan had taken the BMW, Declan had been so pissed, so offended, that he had instantly gone out to buy his own _brand new_ car, and the best one that suited his tastes at that, because fuck you, Ronan.

When Declan thought about it, that felt like a lifetime ago. Sometimes, it felt like another life altogether. Other times, it felt like a dream he once had and was slowly forgetting.

Nowadays, they drove together often, alternating between their two vehicles, and the BMW had become the second most familiar car to Declan. On more than one occasion had Ronan thrown him the keys, leaving Declan to lounge in the passenger seat. Declan would listen to any of his brother’s music that didn’t make his ears bleed, waiting while Ronan finished talking to Gansey, talking to Blue, or “talking” to Adam. Like the fucking gentleman he was, Declan pretended not to notice how flushed his brother’s face was when he finally got into the car, or how his shirt had a lot more wrinkles in it than before, or those marks on his neck that he had clearly not seen in the mirror yet.

Declan simply drank his coffee and kept his poker face directed at the windshield.

The issue was, they both wanted the steering wheel. One for the freedom of it, the other for the control. So they had come to a compromise.

Declan never thought his brother and “compromise” would ever mix together, but they had.

Traditionally, the driver got say over the music. In their case, the tradition was flipped. One got the wheel, the other got power over the music choice, a power they abused often.

It wasn’t often that Declan sat in the passenger seat of his own car, but he had driven two hours from D.C., had another two hours to drive back later that night, and also had his perfect driving record absolutely ruined that morning, so he really wasn’t in the mood.

He happily slipped into the car and hit the button on the dashboard, starting back up the song that had been playing last. He used to fret over his brothers finding out over his music tastes, but now he didn’t care. Let them tease him over it, his was taste was golden.

The sound of music reached Ronan’s ears as he opened the driver’s side door. He rolled his eyes so hard it looked painful.

He could play Celtic music, a safe ground for the two of them, but Ronan had lost that privilege when he had insulted his love of Broadway and now needed to be punished.

“You and your shit music taste,” Ronan spat, slamming the car door as he got behind the wheel.

Declan leaned back in his seat contently and turned up the volume.

They had only just pulled out of the driveway when Ronan suddenly turned the music off. Declan was utterly offended at such a brazen move no less than two minutes into the drive, but before he could call foul his brother held up a hand to stop him.

“Oh, hey. Almost forget, this is for you,” his brother said, rummaging through the pockets of his black jeans.

Declan perked immediately in interest. He felt his chest grow light and warm even though he literally had no idea what it was. Ronan could hit him with a firecracker and he would still be touched by the gift, because it meant that Ronan had thought about him even when Declan wasn’t there and—

And wow, did Declan need to get a grip. For God’s sake, it could be a Starbucks gift card for all he knew. He needed to reel it in.

“You got me something?” he asked as casually as he could.

“Yeah. Surprise.” Ronan tossed something into his lap.

It was a wallet.

Declan’s eyes lit up. “Hell, Ronan, this is for me? Is this real leather? Yes, it is. I can tell it’s the really good variety too. You how I can tell it’s the good variety? It’s actually in the smell—”

“It’s not the wallet, it’s what’s INSIDE the wallet, doofus.” Ronan rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the car. “Only you would get excited over a damn wallet.”

“Of good quality,” he corrected, then popped it open.

He sucked in a breath.

Behind see-through plastic, a picture had been tucked inside. Two faces smiled up at him, one sharp and one soft, one with plenty of blond curls and one with hardly any hair at all, both with the same blue eyes.

 _Don’t cry,_ Declan commanded himself, steeling his expression. His brother would never let him live it down.

“Thanks, man.” He cleared his throat. “That—this means a lot.”

“Don’t get sentimental on me, you bastard,” Ronan said, but his smile was blinding.

Declan wondered if Ronan had bought the gift or dreamt it. Either way, it came from Ronan. He’d move all of his cards over from his old one later. For now, he just wanted to hold it.

Although their home in Singer’s Falls was on the outskirts of Henrietta and a good drive away from signs of civilization, the car ride went by quite quickly in Declan’s opinion. He decided to leave the music off, a seldom move on the wielder of the music choice, to chat with his brother. They went back and forth on inconsequential shit and would punch each other with way more force than necessary whenever a Volkswagen Beetle came into sight.

“You seem to be in a real spritely mood today,” Declan remarked once they had parked, shutting the door behind him. He left the gift Ronan had given him safely tucked inside, not wanting it to lose it’s brand new smell just yet.

He really hoped the girl with the glasses wasn't working at the sub house today. She was cute, but every time she flirted with him it just reminded him of why Barb never got her shit together. Nevertheless, Declan had been working with wood and hammers and nails all morning, and he hated wood and hammers and nails, and now he was hungry. He needed a foot-long sub, a bag of chips, a large soda, and maybe a cookie, stat.

Beside him Ronan walked, not pausing as he lifted his hand over his shoulder and clicked the keys to lock the car. He didn’t even click it a few more times to hear the beeping as Declan would have done. Even as they walked up to the sub house side by side, Declan could see the differences in their stride. Declan had a straight back and a confident walk, but Ronan had a swagger and a look that said “don’t fuck with me.” He was such a fucking badass.

He also had a smile today, which was odd, since Ronan’s default expression didn’t involve any smiling.

“What can I say? Today’s a good day, man. Let me enjoy it.”

Declan opened the door for his brother. “It’s not like we’ve done much today. What could have happened that’s making you so happy?”

Ronan’s grin widened. He gave Declan a mischievous, rather concerning wink and walked into the building.

Declan sighed, shook his head a little and followed him inside. The “why” part of it didn’t really matter, anyway. If his brother was happy, then Declan was too.

He was also hungry but—damn it—Glasses was here today and obviously brightened when she saw that Declan had walked into the building. He held back a groan as he was acutely aware that she was zeroing in on every move he was going to make while in the sub house. He learned it didn’t even matter if he mentioned that he had a girlfriend, men and women still winked at him as they slipped him their numbers.

Which, before Ashley, he would have winked back and taken it even if he had been in a relationship or two already.

But that was beside the point.

As slyly as he could, he shoved his wallet into Ronan’s hand and hurried off in the direction of the restroom, planning to stay in there texting whoever would reply in the ten minutes or so it would take for Ronan to order.

 _Aw, she’s so disappointed,_ came Ronan’s text a minute later.

Declan tapped away at his phone, ignoring all the other patrons in the restroom. _Im too hungry to flirt. Cant you flirt for me?_

_Ew_

_Harsh bro. She does not look that bad_

_That’s not the problem_

_Just pretend your into girls for like two minutes_

_I don’t pretend worth shit_

Declan chuckled. It was true. His brother refused to lie and, as a side effect, absolutely sucked at it.

 _What do you want,_ came the next message.

_The usual_

_The fuck am I, your bartender?_

_Don’t be expecting any tips_

_You’re banned from the bar_

_It was a stupid bar anyway. One star_

_I’m getting you a salad_

_Ronan dont you dare_

_You want a water with that?_

_Ronan I fucking mean it_

_If you’re nice I might put croutons on it_

_You bring me a fucking salad and I will break a window_

_You’re not you when you’re hungry_

_I WILL MURDER YOU LYNCH_

_Thats it. No croutons for you_

Glasses popped one of the subs in the microwave and hit the button. She perked up as she turned around, seeing the man with the curly hair finally leaving the restroom. Usually, he would stay in there until his brother had finished ordering. Seizing her chance, she pulled out a blank piece of receipt paper and went to search for a pen, but then she halted. He wasn’t staring at her, he was staring at his brother, the scary guy with the shaved head, tattoo on the back of his neck, and, currently, a big grin on his face.

The brother had been the closest to the glass counter, so she jumped when he suddenly bolted out of the line. His shoes made a squeaking sound as he skidded across the tiles and exited the building through one of the side doors. Glasses watched as the curly-haired man sprinted across the sub house after him, dodging tables and chairs and people before slipping out the door before it had even closed again.

“Um.” She turned to the rest of the people in line, all of them staring in the direction the two boys had run off in. “Next customer?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was not...the word limit I had in mind.
> 
> I do apologize for the lengthier wait. I came down sick with something awful the week before, although I do believe the worst of it is over now.
> 
> Do let me know what you think of this chapter! Normally I would wait for a Friday or Saturday to post a chapter but I simply couldn't wait! I was quite excited about this one and I hope you all enjoyed it!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	16. Through The Looking-Glass

_Wednesday, April 25_

_57 days until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

“Found it!”

Blue slammed the open book onto the table’s surface triumphantly. Her Raven Boys crowded around her.

Hand-written passages and drawings covered the pages of the old book, its papers dusty and grayed from infrequent use.

 _Doppelgänger_ , read the top of the paper in large calligraphy. _A creature not only same in appearance, but in manner of walk, talk, and apparel._

Opposite to page with the passages, a colorless illustration of two identical women faced each other.

“The fuck is this supposed to help with?” Ronan asked, earning withering looks from all three of his friends. “This isn’t some damn unicorn. This bastard came from my mind. Who the hell cares what’s in this book of crap of legends?”

“I thought this creature manifested from _Declan’s_ mind,” Gansey pointed out, ignoring Ronan in favor of reading the scriptures.

“Oh, please. Declan isn’t that creative.”

“Jesus Christ, Adam.” Gansey tugged his friend to the other side of him as Ronan’s fists tightened with two audible cracks.

“I created Cabeswater, so I created this thing, so I should be able to rip it apart.” Ronan’s nails dragged across the table’s surface. Blue stared at the lines he left behind in dismay.

“Declan still had a hand in this, let’s not forget,” Gansey said.

“Haven’t forgotten,” Adam said bitterly.

“For the love of Christ, _Parrish_ —”

“You know what, no. All of you, back! Back, back, back!” Blue spun around and forcibly shooed them all several feet away from her. She snatched up the book and faced them, blocking them from seeing the papers. “You’ve lost your reading privileges.”

Gansey deflated. Ronan tantrumed in silence and Adam feigned indifference.

Blue glared at them all over the rim of the book. She plucked a barrette from the pocket of her dress, pinned back her bangs, and began to read.

“As opposed to a simple replica of a person’s appearance, these creatures mimic characteristics—”

“Oh, yay. Storytime with Sargent."

“Ronan, _shut up—_ and have at times been known to even share exact memories. Unless otherwise shown, close friends and family members often fail to tell an individual and their doppelgänger apart, often leading to cases of mischief, chaos, or even destruction. Traditions depict these creatures as harbingers of bad luck and should be considered dangerous."

“Lovely,” spat Ronan.

“And accurate," Gansey appraised. He turned to Ronan. "No matter who created it, it still certainly falls under this category. Does it say anything about its motive?"

“It sounds like they’re poltergeists.” Her eyes flicked back and forth as she read further down the page. “Mischief-makers, reports of disputes in villages and distrust among citizens...They cause problems on the human plane just for the hell of it.”

“Anything else?” Adam had been making a face as he listened. “That kind of sounds too derisory for this guy.”

Ronan made his own face, similar to a snake. He hissed, “It isn’t a _guy.”_

“Quite right. Both of you.” No longer requiring his reading glasses for reading, Gansey took to using it as a makeshift telescopic pointer and waved it between his two friends, then pointed it at Blue. “This thing is specifically holding onto Declan and is refusing to let go. It has to have a reason.”

“Hold on, hold on," she said, skimming the rest of the way down the page. Most of it was just other sources they could go to later, many from Ireland lore, which made an awful lot of sense considering Ronan and Declan's shared heritage. She turned the page.

The boys watched as her expression grayed.

Several seconds passed as she failed to say anything.

“You’re killing us, Sargent,” Ronan said.

Slowly, Adam asked, “What’s it say?”

“Well.” She took a breath. “There is one thing.”

She turned the book around.

Like the two pages before it, the one on the left held scriptures while the right portrayed an image. Once again, there were two women, the same ones from before. Now one lied on the ground, and from what the boys could tell of the all-gray delineation, she looked to have been eviscerated. The other woman stood in the same place as she had before, smiling now, her hands and dress now drawn darker. If the artist had been given access to more colors, most likely the new image would have been a lot redder.

“To replace the original,” Blue explained.

“Fucking _lovely.”_

“It’s not planning to hurt Declan, is it?” Gansey glanced over with a tinge of panic. Declan may have seemed fine, sleeping soundly on the bed, but Gansey didn’t trust that.

Adam looked over too. “Probably.”

“It probably _will_ or it probably _won’t?”_ he demanded.

“It doesn’t say.” Blue turned the next page, where the information on Doppelgänger’s ended.

“Where the fuck were you guys when it said it was waiting to suck the damn life out of him?” Ronan marched over to the table and slammed the side of his fist into it.

“Would you stop trying to break all my shit?”

He ignored her. “Of course it wants to hurt him! It fucking told us so. When summer gets here, that thing kills him.”

“Not the thing,” Adam corrected. “That thing’s only a part of whatever deal your brother made. It can’t actually hurt anything.” He waved a hand around in the air. “It’s about as real as anything else Declan makes in Cabeswater.”

“It sure seemed a lot more sentient than the other things though,” Blue said.

“And evil.” Ronan spat, for Blue’s sake, into the trashcan in the corner of the room. “That thing is with my _brother._ Right _now._ The fuck knows what it’s doing to him.”

“I doubt it’s doing anything,” Adam reasoned. “It wasn’t like it was doing any harm the last time we saw them. I’m sure he’s...”

He stopped with the frustrated looks Gansey and Blue were firing his way. Adam threw up his hands.

“What?” he mouthed.

He couldn’t decipher their exact, unvoiced words, but by their expressions and extravagant gestures, he figured they were both trying to find his mute button.

Their wordless conversation cut off when Ronan crossed the room, but he either hadn’t noticed their attempts at discretion or didn’t care. He walked over to the bed and landed heavily beside Declan, pressing most of his face into his brother’s arm.

“Wake up, you piece of shit,” he mumbled through the covers.

Adam stared at him, just long enough to ascertain how much he hated seeing Ronan like that. He then rubbed his face with both hands.

“Hold on,” he said, making his way to the door. “I have an idea.”

When he returned, he carried a large crystal bowl in one arm. Gansey and Blue brightened as they recognized it as one of the bowls the Fox Way women often used in their readings. In his other arm, he held a plastic jug of water. He placed both on the wooden floor next to Declan’s bed.

Gansey smiled for the first time since their hellish encounter earlier that day. “Good thinking, Parrish.”

Blue was no stranger to scrying, having been surrounded by scryers from such an early age that it had been a cultural shock to her when she had found out that most people don’t peer into containers of water and ask to see images.

“What are you planning to see?” she asked, eyeing the water curiously. She would not see or hear anything in the water, but she could easily imagine.

Adam looked up to where Declan rested. His breathing was so relaxed, Adam found it difficult to hear even when he tilted his good ear that way. “Him.”

Gansey peeked into the water as though he might see something too. “You mean his spirit? In Cabeswater?”

“Yeah. I might see something that can help break him out, or a way to talk to him," he said, filling the bowl near the brim. He could have placed it on the table, but he preferred the floor, closer to the earth.

“Anything, really,” Gansey agreed, “would be helpful.”

Three faces crowded onto the water’s surface as the rippling from pouring it settled. Adam stared at the reflections of his friends. One with aggressively spiked hair and eyes angry enough to match; one deep in thought with his thumb pressed against his lips again; one pale and fretting.

Adam took a breath. His senses came to him more clearly when he worked alone, when there weren’t several other fields of emotions pressing into him, but he wouldn’t bring himself to ask them to leave. He could feel their worry, their fear, and Ronan’s pain.

He would just have to work a little harder.

“I’ll need everyone to be quiet,” he told them.

Ronan pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, legs hanging over the side and one hand pressed into the sheets next to his brother. Blue stepped over Adam to perch on the chair, and Gansey occupied the only free space next to Adam. They all nodded wordlessly.

It took him a minute, and then another minute, and then another minute more before he started to feel anything that suggested that he was doing more than just sitting there in a poorly lit room late at night, staring at a bowl of tap water. He tried not to think about how much time was passing before he found himself slipping away from the room full of his friends, and into the place he asked to see.

He had to dismiss all the worldly distractions, repeatedly, to keep from losing it.

He found and dismantled all of Gansey's unvoiced questions, which, despite not being vocalized, were exceedingly loud. He dismissed Blue’s truculence and intensity, her desire to fight the monster that none of the other three wanted to think about and her frustration that she physically couldn't. He dismissed Ronan’s sorrows and fears. He dismissed the strong sense of contentment radiating off of Declan.

He dismissed how much that pissed him off.

He brushed it all away until the only image left was the still surface of the water, and then that too dissipated.

The room fell away. His friends fell away. His body fell away.

At first, he worried as everything became transcendentally dark, but then realized that the place he had asked to see was simply transcendentally dark. Once his vision adjusted, a new place came into view.

He saw a room, an impressively nice bedroom, and that was just from what he could see through the deeply blue-ish black tint of nighttime. It was an expansive space, bigger than the living room Adam had grown up in, filled with trinkets and trophies strategically placed throughout it. Well-made shelves in geometric shapes were nailed to the wall and filled with books and journals. Even in the dark, he could see that the rug, bedspread, and curtains pulled across the windows all held tasteful designs. Nothing was thrown on the floor. The only thing seemingly out of place was a large object shoved underneath the bed that he thought looked like a fire extinguisher.

On top of the bed, under the covers, a chest rose and fell. Declan Lynch.

Unlike the body of Declan Lynch, however, _this_ Declan was lied out in an independently decided sleeping position, the covers pulled over his head and his arm shoved beneath the pillow. It was very much human, very much _alive_ when Adam compared it to where his body lied in the reading room of 300 Fox Way, replicating a scene from Sleeping Beauty.

On the nightstand next to him, beneath a lamp that looked like it was made to be matched with that particular nightstand, a digital clock read in bright green numbers, _11:39 pm._

Although he could only see Declan and what must have been Declan’s room, he pronounced his voice as he asked, “What time is it?”

A beat of confused silence followed his question, just long enough for Adam to imagine all of his friends realizing that he had spoken to them, register what he had asked and scramble to find a wristwatch without making any noises. He couldn’t see Gansey, or even differ which direction he was coming from, but he heard Gansey’s voice fill his head as his friend said, “11:40.”

“Then he’s on the same time as us,” he explained. “Hang on.”

The room had shifted out of focus with those few words Adam had spared to talk, like a purposely blurred picture in a photo gallery, or if his eyesight had drastically degraded into alarming need of glasses. When he zeroed back in on the room, he realized Declan had begun to stir.

It had nothing to do with Adam, he knew, since Adam was about as visible to him as he had been in the forest earlier that day. He was a projection, nothing more than a spirit, rather similar to Declan in that moment. Two souls, outside their bodies, except Adam fully intended to return to his.

Suddenly enough to make Adam jump, Declan threw off the comforter with a dramatic _floosh_ and let it fall haphazardly across the bed.

“God bless it,” the older man said, or at least Adam thought he had said through the thick grogginess of his voice. Declan swung his legs over the side of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees as he rubbed the back of his neck. His hair fell across most of his face as he hung his head in defeat.

Aloud, Adam said, “Looks like he’s having trouble sleeping.”

“He’s _sleeping_ in his _dreams?”_ he heard Blue ask.

“Well, he’s trying,” he corrected.

"Even in his dreams, he can't sleep?" Gansey, an insomniac, sounded horrified. He then sounded more faded, directed elsewhere as he asked, “Does he normally have trouble sleeping?”

“The hell if I know,” Ronan’s voice echoed back.

“Who does know then?” Gansey’s voice, filling every space of Adam’s head, sounded clipped. “Does Matthew know? He shared a room with him in Aglionby, didn’t he? We’ll give him a call. No, not right now. Here, just hand me the phone—”

“Guys,” Adam hissed, watching as the image around him started to waver. “Shh.”

“You know Matthew’s gonna be shit for help,” Ronan snapped. “And there’s no way I’m telling him about this.”

“I thought he had a girlfriend,” Blue’s voice entered Adam’s head next. “I bet she would know.”

“No.”

“Ronan, you’re not leaving us very many options,” Gansey said, exasperated. “We can’t afford not to exercise every available option.”

“If me and Matthew don’t know shit, you think _Girlfriend_ will? Don’t fucking insult me.”

“Don’t be a dick, Ronan.” Blue next. “It can’t hurt to at least ask.”

Ronan next. “Every damn second we’re here _counts._ Yes, it will fucking hurt to ask.”

“Just your pride.”

Gansey next. “No one said we all had to be there to ask. There’s plenty of us—we’ll split up. I’ll take Girlfriend and you take Matthew. We should ask any of his teachers too, and students. Don’t give me that look. Surely this will benefit.”

“We already fucking did that.”

“I meant thoroughly. Blue, how do you feel about investigating the people at Aglionby?”

“Highly Disagree.”

“The college, then.”

Adam had a brief moment of feeling like a father of three, threatening to turn this car around. “Gu—”

“What about his doctor? Ronan, you said he had a doctor in Aglionby, right? What was his name—”

“ _GUYS.”_

Adam held his breath and waited a solid ten seconds to make sure all of his friends had properly.

Stopped.

Talking.

He then took another, long inhale. He poured all of his attention into Declan and the room until the images sharpened once more.

For a few seconds, Declan did nothing but sit there in a tired, half-awake state. Adam was beginning to wonder if he was about to topple back onto the mattress, but then he reached for the alarm clock, pulling it closer and squinting at it. He gave a hefty sigh and set the clock back down with a careless clank.

Adam failed to feel any sense of intrusiveness by standing there in the room, watching Declan without his knowledge. If Declan hadn’t wanted to be spied on, then maybe he shouldn’t have sacrificed himself to a sentient forest.

But who cared about what Adam thought? It wasn’t as though Adam had personal experience with sacrifices and sentient forests or anything.

It was an odd thing, seeing Declan Lynch like this. Adam had only ever seen him when Declan had wanted to be seen, when he had been prepared to be seen. In this moment, the oldest of the Lynches appeared very raw, very real despite existing in this unreal world, in an unreal room. This version of him was more true than any other Adam had seen before. Sad and ironic that it had to be when Declan wasn’t living a truth at all.

His curls were wilder than Adam thought Declan would have ever allowed him to see. Normally he kept his hair pushed away from his face, but at the moment it was obstructing almost all of his eyes. He was also shirtless, something else Adam doubted he would have ever seen. Declan rose slowly from the bed and stretched, making a grumbling noise as he attempted to shake himself awake. Even in the dark, Adam could make out the muscles in his arms, in his chest.

It was also absolutely no help to him that Declan literally had every genetic feature of Ronan: Same pale skin, same hair color, same eyes, same sharp face, same height, same crooked nose that had been punched a few too many times.

At this point, Adam was convinced that the world just wanted him to suffer.

 _Honestly,_ he thought. _Fuck this._

“What?” He heard Gansey’s startled voice say.

Perhaps he hadn’t just thought it.

“Gansey, quiet," he scolded. "I’m trying to focus.”

As Declan walked over to the chair by his desk, grabbing a silk nightshirt the same shade of expensive as his pants, the room began to grow darker than it already was at 11:47 pm. The corners of Adam’s vision became wavey and confusing, as though he was viewing it through an unclean filter.

Adam took some breaths and summoned his focus into clearing the room. He sighed as he heard a voice filling his head again.

“Ronan, I said quiet.”

“I didn’t fucking say anything,” said Ronan’s voice.

Adam felt confused for a beat.

Then his heart sank.

“...You didn’t?”

The room continued to cloud up, despite the lack of talking that Adam could hear.

“ _You don’t get to see him,”_ that voice filled his head again. Through the rough vowels that sounded like they were being dragged through gravel and the growls of untamed animals, it vaguely resembled Ronan’s.

“Adam?” Blue’s voice was thrown in the mix. “Everything okay?”

Adam went to say no, but found he couldn’t move his lips.

A black mist began to cover more of his sight, spreading from just his peripheral vision to seeping out to smudge the rest of the area. It surrounded him, clouding what he could see of the room, clouding Declan.

“ _You don’t get to love him.”_

From what Adam could still see, he saw Declan finish buttoning up his shirt, unconcerned.

The mist wasn’t filling the room. It was filling Adam’s vision.

“ _None of you do.”_

If Adam could have moved his mouth, he knew he would have gasped as a bright, hot pain suddenly shot into the side of his neck.

He slapped a hand over it, but despite that, the pain continued to move. It scorched a path from his jaw and down towards his collar bone. He brought his other hand up out of reflex, out of the hopes of blocking it, but it kept going.

Invisible to his eyes and hands but not his screaming nerves, five searing, sharp points slowly dragged through his skin.

“Adam!”

On normal occasions, he would have eased out of his scrying until he had become aware of his body and whatever room he had begun the scrying in. Usually, it was the bathroom at his college dorm. He had many memories of blinking awake there, finding himself standing at the water-filled sink, looking up to see himself in the mirror.

There was no easing this time. All at once, the mist-filling room gave way to the slightly more illuminated reading room of Fox Way, swiping from one scene to another so quickly that Adam’s head spun.

He remembered once in a pet store, the person in charge of the fish had randomly been listing off fish facts to him. She said that he had to acclimate his fish to the water first, letting the bags float at the surface so that the water in the bags could match the temperature of the water in the tank. Otherwise, he would risk shocking his new aquatic friends with the sudden temperature change and possibly killing them. Adam hadn’t been getting a fish. He couldn’t afford a fish, but he enjoyed being informed nonetheless.

He wondered for a brief moment if his lack of acclimation was about to be the death of him. As his senses flipped from spirit to physical he was only vaguely aware of his body toppling over.

He looked up to find Ronan’s face the closest, finding himself pulled up against his chest. He searched for the bowl and found it knocked over by Gansey’s feet, drenching the wooden floors. If Gansey had caused that, he didn’t look to have regretted it.

Adam hadn’t realized that he had put his literal hands up to the still thrumming spot until Ronan forcibly pulled them away.

Five red, inflamed scratches ran down the side of his neck. One scratch didn’t reach as far as the others, one that looked to have been caused by a thumb

Gansey, his expression horrified and enraged, demanded, “What happened?”

Ronan’s voice came from the puddle soaking into the floorboards.

“ _Take a wild guess.”_

* * *

Declan was almost afraid to ask, “What are you doing?”

On numerous occasions, he had found his brother alone in a dark kitchen during some unsightly hour of night or morning, usually at the kitchen island with a warm drink to help with sleep. Almost always Declan had walked into the kitchen with the same intentions of making that drink and to laze around the island until he felt exhaustion strongly enough to dare try another attempt at sleeping. It was less common, rare even, to stumble across his brother actually sleeping at night. However, he had never walked down the stairs to hear treacherous laughter echoing from the kitchen. When he had peeked around the corner, he had found his brother alone, as per usual, with his drink, as per usual, laughing hysterically, as not per usual.

Ronan had been staring into his cup and grinning at it like the liquid had told him something hilarious, but his gaze flicked upwards when he heard Declan.

“Nothing,” he answered, taking a sip.

"You must be more sleep-deprived than we thought," Declan said as he began walking through the nightly routine of gathering a mug and turning on the stove. The kettle was already there, waiting for him. He lifted it and found that Ronan had brewed extra for him, all he needed to do now was heat it up.

“Can’t sleep or bad dreams?” his brother asked.

“Just can’t sleep. You?”

“Same.”

“How long?”

“An hour, I guess.”

Declan nodded to himself as he glimpsed at the clock on the wall. It took him a moment to read it in the dark, but it looked to be nearing midnight. Perfect, there was hope for them yet. “That’s good. Heading back up soon?”

“When you’re ready.”

That made him happy. He smiled as he left the kettle to heat up, in search of a snack. They still had Oreos, right? "What was so funny?"

“Huh?”

Damn it, Matthew ate them all. He could tell it was Matthew because the empty Oreo box was still in the fridge. “What were you laughing at?”

“Oh, that.” Ronan took another sip, unconcerned. “Just thinking of funny shit. Probably will make no sense in the morning.”

Declan really wanted something to do with chocolate. There had to be something chocolatey in the pantry. “I know what you mean. Ever dream about something so ridiculous you wake yourself up from laughing?”

“No.”

“Me neither, but Matthew does sometimes." Stupid Matthew, eating everything in the goddamn kitchen. "He woke me up once at Aglionby after he had a dream about horses gluing things to their heads. He told me they wanted to be unicorns."

Ronan snickered. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Wait, didn’t his mom bake something that morning? “So what was it that you found so funny? Was it weird shit like Matthew dreams up?”

“Guess you could say that.”

 _FUCK YES,_ she did. Blueberry cobbler.

“Like what?”

Forget chocolate, Declan cut at least a third of what was left on the dish and stuck it in the microwave. That was one-third of what Matthew would not be getting the pleasure of eating.

“You know how Adam can see things in bowls of water?” Ronan looked down at the mug in his hands. “Or cups?”

“You mean that witchy stuff?” Declan made a face. “You get a guy who goes to Harvard, but he also practices witchcraft. I guess it’s a give and take sort of thing.”

“I don’t think it’s witchcraft, Declan.”

“It’s witchcraft,” he argued. He made a mental note to take Adam to Sunday church when he visited this weekend. “But, yeah, what about it?”

“What if the water talked back to him?”

“That would be...” Declan considered. “Kind of creepy, actually.”

Ronan laughed again, a similar tune to the laughter Declan had heard earlier. Declan shook his head at his brother’s sense of humor.

He heard the dinging of the microwave at the same time he heard the whistling of the kettle. He placed the cobbler on the island and went to turn off the stove. Even with the lights off, he could still see the steam of the tea as he poured it. He grabbed a fork before he went to take a seat next to his brother, then stopped and grabbed another fork, in case his brother wanted some too.

Sometimes, he really loved these late nights with Ronan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who started reading Call Down The Haaaaaaaawk!!! Well, listening, since it's an audiobook—which I also fully recommend! It has the same narrator from TRC and he is phenomenal! 
> 
> *shoves aside all other reasons to read CDTH*
> 
> Me: “Where’s Declan Lynch!?”
> 
> And oh wow he’s right there in CHAPTER ONE!? YESSSSS!!!
> 
> I feel like I’m the only person who actively searches for that one character in this series, like that <1% of the readers who looks forward to seeing this guy, like I’m the mother of Tree #2 in the school play.
> 
> Anyone else feel like that? 
> 
> No? Just me? It’s just me isn’t it. 
> 
> As promised! There will continue to be no spoilers for CDTH in this story! But if anyone wants to mention how amazing their experience with CDTH was you are absolutely welcome to!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this chapter too! I had a blast writing the second part in particular!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	17. On The Other Side Of Paradise

_Friday, April 27_

_55 days until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

Three cars pulled out of the driveway of 300 Fox Way. One dark gray and sleek, its backseat littered with indistinguishable crumbs and crumpled up speeding tickets; one brown and dented and ugly, but every item in it specifically placed throughout the interior; and one the most obnoxious orange color in all of Henrietta.

They shared the same road for all of two minutes before the sleek one split. The remaining two shared the same highway for all of two minutes before the orange one split, and by split, it pulled over onto the side of the highway before it stopped working in the middle of a 70 mph interstate. The ugly one broke down two hours later.

And the sleek one had added another crumpled up speeding ticket to its hoard in the back.

The afternoon burned into evening as the miles went by.

Three cars.

Four travelers.

One sleeper.

Fifty-five days until the Summer Solstice.

One monster standing in their way.

* * *

“Hey! Declan!”

Matthew must have thought his older brother had left his door cracked (which he never did) because instead of knocking on the door and waiting for the okay to come in, as any other person would have, Declan heard the telltale smack of someone running into an object and could see his door shuddering in his peripheral vision.

Declan took a deep inhale through the nose. He winced as insistent knocking followed.

“Declan!” _knock knock knock_ “Hey-oooh, Declan! Declan?”

_Knock knock knock_

Grudgingly, he left his work to get up and open it. Although it hadn’t dampened his smile, the door had left a red mark spreading across the bridge of his little brother’s nose.

“I’m in the middle of an essay, what it is?”

Matthew struck a pose. “We’re watching The Queen Anne’s Revenge 4!”

Declan made a sound of disapproval. “Isn’t that a ghost movie? You know you can’t watch those kinds of movies, Matthew.”

His brother pouted. “Aw, come on, man. I’m sixteen and old enough to drive.”

Declan cringed. “Learning. Learning to drive.”

“Everyone’s seen it! Even SL, and he hates ghost stories.” Matthew grabbed the front of his brother’s shirt and shook him insistently. Declan rolled his eyes as he did it. “We gotta watch it! There’s this sick ending thing at the end and everyone’s gonna be talking about it.”

He translated his brother’s “everyone” from English to the Matthew language that meant “four, maybe five friends at Algionby.”

He removed Matthew's hands from him. “I can’t. I’m working on something really important right now.”

His brother's pouting went up another level. “But it won’t be as much fun without you.”

Nope. Nope, Declan wasn’t going to fall for that. He would prevail. He would make it through this. He would do better than last time. Nope, nope, nope.

“Can’t.”

“ _Please!”_

Fuck.

He offered an alternative. “Go watch it with Ronan and his bird. That’ll be fun.”

Declan would say said bird's name except every time he did say it, said bird would be summoned. Somehow, she would hear him, appear, and once again attempt to pull the curls out of his hair for nesting materials. Ronan’s bird never did that to anyone else. Declan would like to believe it was because he had nice hair, but he suspected whereas all of Ronan’s dream creations adored his boyfriend, they lived to pester his older brother.

Even now, he thought he caught the sound of a flap somewhere in the house and carefully took a step back into his room.

“I already asked Ronan,” Matthew said pitifully. “He says he’ll only watch it if you watch it.”

“Why?”

“He says he wants to see you jump at the scary parts.”

Declan rolled his eyes for the third time in the past—he glanced at his watch—three minutes. He had already promised to watch the new episode of their favorite show airing later in the night.

Seldom did the three drastically differing Lynch brothers mutually enjoy all one thing, so they had all made of point of watching the show together every Friday night. On the rare occasion when Declan couldn't break away from D.C. long enough to make the drive home, they would text each other during commercial breaks.

However, he had not made plans in the day for a movie that would last for at least two hours, if not three if he took into account how all three of them would argue over every little thing. Two hours was his sufficient studying time, three hours meant a coffee break.

“Maybe another time.”

“Please! It’s got the girl you like from that detective show and Ronan’s guy from When Disaster Strikes Back.”

“Ronan’s guy?”

Matthew's expression suddenly changed to that of a person who's said too much. "Pretend I didn't say that. But we've already made popcorn—”

“Isn’t that the dude who always takes his shirt—?”

“SHHH! No! It’s not! Look, we rented it for forty-eight hours—”

“Wait, it’s not the shirtless guy? You know, the one with the spikey hair.” Declan used his hands to imitate spiked hair as though Matthew needed charades to understand the English Declan was saying to him. Matthew took a deep breath, wondering how long both his brothers were going to treat him like he was two going on three. Perhaps always. “Then who is it?”

Matthew made frantic movements with his hands. “Stop talking about that!” He stuffed his yelling into a whisper. “If he hears this he’ll kill both of us!”

But Declan didn’t appear to have heard that, or perhaps didn't care. After so many near-death experiences with their middle brother, Matthew supposed one might become numb to the threat of it.

Declan’s eyes brightened as he said, “So, wait, it’s the dude with the _glasses?”_

“Are you two watching this thing or not?” Ronan’s shout was buffered with the flight of stairs between them. “The popcorn’s getting cold!”

There was nothing Matthew could do. He could only watch in horror as Declan ran past him to the railing, leaned over, and shouted back, “You’re crushing on glasses guy from Disaster Strikes Back?”

“WHAT?” And then, “MATTHEW, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

“He’s got like no muscle! What the fuck? I thought you had better taste than that!”

“Fuck off!”

“He looks like a goddamn twig! Adam would be insulted!”

“You tell Adam this and I’ll break your neck!”

Declan startled Matthew by snatching the front of his shirt. He pulled him close and said, “Put the words ‘haha worth it’ on my grave.”

He then dashed for his room, for where his phone was most likely at, a mere millisecond before the sound of footsteps pounding on stairs could be heard.

Matthew ran to the bathroom, the closest hiding spot, and locked the door. He cringed at the sound of two bodies colliding into Declan’s door, far harder than he ever had, followed by shouting and one-sided laughter. He fumbled for his phone in the pocket of his sweatshirt.

_Declan did something and now Ronan’s mad and now they’re fighting! What to do!?!_

He flinched at the sound of shattered glass. Thankfully his dad texted back a moment later.

_Fire extinguisher_

* * *

Ronan hadn’t wanted to, but he had brought Matthew with him. If anyone knew Declan Lynch, anyone in this world, it was their youngest brother.

Declan avoided their father, and he definitely avoided his middle brother. He even at times avoided his mother, but Matthew?

Never.

The two brothers had shared a dorm room for the longest time. Declan went to as many of his games that he could fit into his schedule. He packed his meals and bought his clothes, solely for the fact that he didn’t trust anyone else to do that. He drove him to sports’ shops with a list of required items for lacrosse and soccer and waited patiently while Matthew was distracted by everything that was not lacrosse nor soccer. Every walk in the park, almost every McDonald's request, he fulfilled.

He never got upset when Matthew teased him (“You always look so sour!”) yet never failing to do so when Ronan did (“Were you born with the bones needed for smiling?”).

Maybe it was because Ronan didn’t tease. He jabbed. But he jabbed at everyone. No one was excluded from it. Not Gansey, not Blue, not Adam, not even Matthew. The women of Fox Way, the teachers at Aglionby, the cashier at the grocery store, Chainsaw. For some reason, though, Declan always ignored Ronan’s jabs in a way that suggested he had not taken it well at all.

Ronan had to wonder why that was. Declan had withstood all of the doppelgänger’s jabs without issue. What singled Ronan out from that creature, besides the obvious?

The Achilles' heel of Matthew's help, however, lied in two big faults that Declan would not have overlooked: his inability to keep a secret, and his dirt-poor memory.

“Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

“Saw who?”

Ronan pressed a fist to his forehead. “Declan, Matthew. Declan—Look, whose car is this?”

He waved two arms at the silver-turning-yellow Volvo in front of them.

Matthew studied it. Or, at least made a face that he thought would have looked like someone studying something. “Yours?”

“ _Declan’s.”_

“Woah, really?” Matthew was genuinely shocked, and for the first time since Ronan had picked him up from Aglionby in the middle of the school day, Ronan saw thoughts working hard to do critical thinking in his eyes. “That’s not right. He wouldn’t do this to his car, would he? I sneezed in his car once and he completely flipped out. Look at this! This is like...”

The two brothers stared at the several layers of pollen coating the windshield.

“..not Declan-y.”

Declan-y, Declan-ish. All things that would have been their older brother’s usual pattern of behavior, seemingly tossed out the window.

Ronan didn’t know if it was the lure of Cabeswater or the lure of the doppelgänger that had seduced his brother, but it had to have been a powerful temptation. Declan T. Lynch broke for nothing.

Seeing the state of his beloved car, however, it looked to suggest that something had finally come into existence strong enough to break him.

“It’s not,” he agreed, “that’s the problem.”

He could feel Matthew watching him as he approached the car with a tire iron. His hand felt burned holding it. He could tell his brother’s eyes felt burned seeing it. It was the same kind of tool used to kill their father, the weapon of choice in his death. Having one involved in any way with Declan’s situation invited more images of wills and black clothing than there already were. Ronan was half-tempted to use a rock to break the glass instead—

In fact, he would. Fuck it. He threw the tire iron away, relieved when the grass devoured it and hid it from view. He picked up the largest rock he could find and _SMASH._

Much better.

Matthew jumped as the car alarms went berserk and lights started flashing. He glanced around the giant field and the lone road as though expecting police to spontaneously pull up as though summoned by the car alarm.

“I’ll turn it off in a second, relax,” Ronan said, shaking his head. Out of all the vehicles he had damaged in the past, this one was going down as the most important.

“He’s gonna be pissed,” Matthew said, gaze following the shards of glass as they trickled down the side door. He didn’t sound regretful of Ronan’s choice, though.

“I thought I told you to stop fucking swearing.”

“There’s gonna be a whole lot more swearing when he sees this.” Matthew sounded partially worried, and yet partially thrilled, as though he couldn’t wait to see their brother’s reaction.

Ronan couldn’t wait to see his reaction either. He wanted to see his brother scream, yell, rant and scold and lecture until he was out of breath. He wanted to see his brother act alive.

He knocked off the last of the shards in his way with the rock, until he could reach through without worry of getting his hand sliced and bloodied in the process. He unlocked the door and yanked it open. Inside, the interior looked about the same as he remembered, guarded against the changes of the weather outside. No drinks, no wrappers, no speeding tickets and gas receipts thrown into the back.

It was a breath of fresh air, to find something still Declan-ish.

Matthew only came over once Ronan had disabled the alarm, then the two of them began searching.

The downside of a very Declan-ish scene was that Declan hid things insanely well. Everything appeared mundane and rather sterile, nothing mysterious or strange to suggest possible routes that would have lead him to the moment of sacrificing himself to Cabeswater.

A well-folded, somewhat dusty scarf lied in the back. Ronan picked it up, not expecting to find anything with it but wanting to be thorough, and was hit with the smell of it. He dropped it and stepped out of the car, thankful that Matthew was too busy searching through the center console to notice Ronan holding his head in his hands. That damn cologne that he always hated because it reminded him of Declan, now he hated because it was ripping him apart.

He jumped when Matthew practically screeched with victory, “I got his phone!”

Ronan poked his head back inside. “It turning on?”

His brother tried for several seconds to get the screen to light up, then frowned at it disappointedly. “Nah, it’s totally dead.”

“Is there a charger anywhere?”

There had to be. This was their older brother they were talking about. He probably had a charger in every available place that he might ever, at any point in his lifetime, possibly need a charger. As well as several pens, notepads, napkins, first aid kit, headache relief, anti-acids, a protein bar that surprisingly hadn’t expired yet.

Ronan wasn’t surprised as he found all of those things as he searched through the console and then the glove department. _See,_ he thought smugly, _I do know you._

He found the charger and handed it off to Matthew while he continued sifting through the rest of the Volvo’s supplies. He came across another first aid kit, which felt a bit excessive, sunscreen, sunglasses, binoculars, a map of Henrietta, a map of Virginia, a map of America, a map of England? A map of Japan? A map of Kentucky, which actually felt stranger than the previous two. What the hell was going down in Kentucky? When had Declan visited there?

He left Matthew to intently stare at the phone’s screen, urging it to turn on, while he carried his investigation to the back. More items, mundane in sight but puzzling in thought, filled the trunk.

A telescope, neatly compact in its carrier; a bag of food rations, set to expire in the next three years, and water purifier; another goddamn first aid kit; a bag of extra clothes, which he found weren’t just Declan’s, but also Matthew’s, and—

—Ronan had been _looking_ for that motherfucking sweatshirt.

The more he found, the more uncomfortable he felt. After struggling for a minute, he finally broke open the lock on a plastic file, popped it open, and stared at three ID cards. One with Declan’s picture, one with Ronan’s, one with Matthew’s. The birthdates were all incorrect, aging them all back a year and having Ronan’s birthday in the middle of spring instead of right after Halloween. Their state of residence wasn’t even in this country.

_Robert Norman Lockewood_

_Finnegan Victor Lockewood_

_Ethan George Lockewood_

In what world, Ronan thought, did Declan think he looked like a _Finnegan._

He kept looking, finding more, finding a book on the different kinds of plants. He found pliers, three separate ski masks as though Declan had plans for all of them to rob a bank, a battery-powered fan, pillows and blankets, a gun—

A gun?

Matthew had told him that their brother kept a gun in his car, but Ronan still felt a little surprised as he held it in his hand. He knew their older brother also had a gun in his bedroom, but that felt different. Plenty of threats could come to the Barns, the place where strange and alluring things could attract other strange and also dangerous things, but finding one in his vehicle either meant that those dangerous things continued to follow him when he left the Barns, or Declan drove _towards_ those dangerous things. Or both.

Ronan didn’t know how to feel about that. The same way he didn't know how to feel about the knife that was too large to be a pocket knife, a baseball bat that did not look like it was built for baseball, and then the taser, the pepper spray, the…

Ronan opened up an unmarked white bottle and stared at the little blue pills inside. Horrified.

“Hey, Ronan, look who’s here!”

This was just in the car. How much more would they find if they kept looking?

“Ronan, look!” Matthew climbed out of the car and waved at the two other vehicles as they slowly, bumpingly pulled into the field. “Hey, guys!”

The cars parked on either side of the BMW, a good, healthy distance away from the sad image of the car with the broken window. Gansey and Blue appeared from the Camaro, and a beat later Adam appeared from his own car. His throat was still tightly wound in gauze.

“Afternoon, Matthew,” Gansey greeted. His eyes flashed to Ronan and frowned at whatever expression Ronan must have been wearing. “Any luck?”

“I see you took the creative approach." Blue stared at where the Volvo’s side door window should have been.

“We found his phone!” Matthew told them excitedly, jumping back into the passenger seat.

“Watch the glass,” Ronan hissed.

“Okay, okay,” Matthew hummed happily, holding up the device for everyone to see. “We’re charging it now. I bet it’s almost done!”

Adam walked up beside Ronan and eyed him with an expression Ronan could not decipher. “What’s with the scarf?”

He had forgotten that he had draped the scarf across his shoulders. He figured that the sooner he got used to the smell, the better off he'd be.

He couldn’t tell Adam that he was cold, not with it being nearly May, with touches of summer already in the air. He glanced down at the simply gray, patternless wool scarf and shrugged, walking back to the car without a word. He didn’t look back, but he imagined that Adam didn’t like that answer.

"Just a lot of apocalypse stuff in here," he told Gansey, Blue, and Adam if he was still listening. "And no one, _shockingly_ , knew shit for shat at Aglionby.”

That was two hours he wasn’t going to get back. He still couldn’t decide which had been worse, listening to dumbass students or listening to dumbass teachers demand of _him_ to tell them where Declan went.

“He hasn't been answering any of our emails," nearly seven different teachers had told him in the same blind panic like if Declan didn't answer the next email the principal sent out, he was going to take one of the teachers out back and shoot them.

Ronan hadn't known what to say to that other than, “Yeah, he hasn’t been answering my emails either.”

“Anything with you guys?” he asked them, both because he wanted to know and also because he didn’t want to think about Aglionby anymore. He had gone there with questions and had left with those same questions and several absent notices he was going to have to talk to Matthew about later.

“It looks as if Declan didn’t make too many friends at the university,” Gansey said regrettably. “His professors love him though, but they have just about as much of a clue as the next.”

“I got a lot of his stuff from Girlfriend,” Adam said, a weird expression on his face, as though recalling an unpleasant memory. “She said she broke it off with him when he ghosted her for three weeks.”

Ronan had to wonder what stuff Declan would have left in the possession of one of his affairs. "I'm surprised she didn't just trash it."

“It’s alive!” Matthew called out as the smart phone’s screen finally flashed white.

They all turned around as Matthew disconnected the cord and scooted out of the car. He hopped up to them and handed it to Ronan proudly.

When the lock screen appeared, the jittery excitement fell into silence.

The phone prompted for a code, but that they had all expected. Instead, it was what was behind the code that had everyone but Matthew and Ronan looking away.

Declan's lock screen image had a picture of Matthew drinking a smoothie and making a stupid face at the camera.

Matthew giggled. “Hey, I remember that! He told me I was so weird because I wanted a smoothie when it was, like, forty degrees out.”

Ronan didn't know why, but something was telling him that when he saw the home screen next, it would be a picture of him. That didn’t make sense though, because Declan never took pictures of Ronan. He had no recollections of his older brother ever holding up his phone and telling him, “Smile!”

“Lynch,” Gansey prompted when Ronan had been quiet for too long.

Ronan looked back down at the keys waiting for him to tap in the correct sequence. He had expected this and pulled out of his pocket his newly dreamt creation. It had the appearance of a USB drive, but he knew the part at the end wasn't meant to be plugged into any device. Instead, when he held down a button, a small, blue zap appeared from it.

A lockpick, but for passwords.

He had tested it on Gansey’s smartphone that morning. That test drive had earned some uncomfortable looks from his friends. He then had to endure a long lecture from Gansey on how he should never use this for anything other than an emergency when the dream thing had bypassed Gansey’s security code and unlocked the phone.

He held it to the screen of Declan’s phone now. He imagined Declan would have flipped if he could see what was happening, but considering that he had left his device abandoned inside of an abandoned car for several abandoned months, then he could suffer the consequences.

He pressed his thumb to the button and watched as the small zap shot into the phone. He waited a few seconds for the telltale sound that smartphones made when they were unlocked and heading for the home screen. Instead, a notification message popped up.

At the top of the message, it read _Declan._

Underneath that, it read _Security Breach Detected._

And beneath that, it read _Nice try._

And then the phone exploded.

A jumble of screaming and flying hardware filled the next three seconds.

On the fourth second, they all stood in various guarded, startled positions: arms up, legs bent and ready to run, expressions slack. Little pieces of what used to be a phone littered their little circle. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from where a few of them lied in the grass. Some had embedded themselves into the side of Declan’s car and had chipped the glass of the remaining window parts of the window. One was still on fire. One was in Blue’s hair, though she hadn’t noticed yet. Ronan’s hand was bleeding.

“Are you,” Ronan paused to take a breath, “shitting me.”

Declan had never made it easy for Ronan to learn about him before. Ronan realized that his sleeping didn't mean he was going to be making it easy for him now.

Wordlessly, Adam walked away to grab the medical kit from their car.

Not that there was any need, Ronan wanted to tell him: Declan had three in his car.

* * *

Declan had a bruise swelling on his jaw and an ice pack pressed against his thigh. Ronan had an angry-looking red mark spreading across one side of his face. Both still had bits of foam clinging to their clothes, to the curls of Declan's hair.

Neither seemed bothered by their current states as they ate handfuls of popcorn in between bouts of yelling at the main character.

The front door suddenly opened. Ronan and Matthew, on either side of their older brother, each snatched onto one of his arms to keep him from bolting off the couch. As usual, it took Declan a second to remember that his dad had texted him beforehand so that he _wouldn’t_ jump from the couch and go right for the gun on the third shelf of the living room bookcase.

Old habits died hard, the three brothers supposed, if they ever died at all.

“We’re home, boys,” a deep voice resonated down the hall.

The click of heels followed behind, and then, “My babies!”

A trio of “Hi, Mom” and “Hi, Dad” greeted them as Niall and Aurora Lynch strolled into the living room. They found their three young men hanging their arms over the back of the couch, waving and grinning, but all looking too comfortable to get up or pause their movie.

“Heard you boys got into a fight,” Niall commented with a raised eyebrow, glancing between his two oldest.

Declan and Ronan met each other’s gaze.

They looked genuinely confused.

“We did?” Ronan asked his dad.

“When?” Declan asked next.

Matthew glared at both of them. Niall noticed that his youngest still had the fire extinguisher sitting at his feet.

* * *

The door was still broken from when Ronan had busted it open. He opened it now and watched as one of the hinges finally came loose and clanked onto the welcome mat next to his boot. The door gave a horrendous creak, its last one as it slowly perished and fell from the doorframe.

Everyone winced at the loud crash it made when it fell into the house.

“Your brother’s gonna kill you,” Adam said.

Ronan hoped so. He hoped Declan would wake up so he could kill him over something as stupid as a door.

"Take off your shoes," he told Matthew when they stepped inside and, in a way, indirectly told everyone else.

Matthew promptly plopped down to tug them off while Gansey toed out of his boat shoes and Blue simply jumped out of her giant, iridescently blue rain boots. Ronan didn't know why she had chosen rainboots—the forecast didn't say anything about rain—but he could see how it made it easier than unlacing his own black biker boots.

He ignored the looks he could see three out of four of his company trying not to give him. The only time Ronan cared to remove his shoes was when Declan had yelled at him after he had stepped past the welcome mat.

“Matthew, you’ve been here the most,” Gansey began, all business even when standing in his socks. “Where would you look first?”

“Look for what?”

“For clues.”

“Clues for what?”

Seeing the pain on Ronan’s face, Gansey took a different approach. “We’ll split up. Ronan, Matthew, take upstairs. The rest of us will scout out here.”

Matthew saluted him and said, “Aye yi, Captain,” before dashing towards the stairs.

When Ronan rejoined him on the upper floor hall, he found his brother jumping excitedly outside a doorway.

“I used to stay in this room!” he said. “He’d never let me bring food _or_ drinks up here. Except _water._ And then I had to keep it in the _bathroom._ I was _dying.”_

Ronan withheld a cringe. He didn’t want to think of one brother dying when he already couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the other one.

He let Matthew reminisce in there while he took the next room over, the office. He tugged open drawers he had already looked through the last time he had searched the townhouse, but now he took his time digging through it.

He felt bored with the papers before he had even put the effort into reading them. He picked up stacks, notebooks, files, and a few sticky notes, all organized professionally enough to look ready for a photo shoot for a business blog.

Within a glance, he had dubbed them unhelpful and tossed them onto his brother's desk. One notebook continued to slide until it had reached the crack between the desk and the wall, disappearing likely forever as it fell into it. He had to wonder if Declan’s spirit was twitching, wherever he was in Cabeswater, as Ronan took everything apart.

* * *

Ronan looked at him funny. “You okay?”

Declan thought he must not have been hiding his discomfort well if Ronan had been willing to ask him about it. He had been rubbing the back of his neck, what he suddenly realized Ronan must have recognized as one of his signature signs of distress. It could only have been a sign of distress, considering that there had been no prompt for him to rub his neck. No pain, no scratch.

He turned it into a nonchalant shrug as he lowered his hand back down. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Ronan looked like he didn’t believe him.

“I am,” he insisted.

Ronan raised an eyebrow.

Declan sighed. “I just—I don’t know, I just didn’t feel so good all of a sudden.”

“You sick or something?”

“No,” he answered a little irritatedly. He gave in to the urge to lift his hand to his neck again. “I just felt a little off. It’s nothing to worry about.”

That was a lie, of course. There was always something to worry about.

“I can text Adam about it. I bet he could—”

“ _No.”_

His brother threw back his head and laughed while Declan pouted.

“Pick a card,” his younger brother whispered to him in an ominous voice. “Pick any card.”

“You get those things near me and I will _burn them,”_ Declan promised.

He had seen Adam’s deck, had accidentally touched one when Adam had offered for him to grab one and Declan had stupidly assumed that he was doing a magic trick. He remembered turning the card around, confused by the picture of a guy wearing a creepy red mask and wondering if Adam collected different versions of playing cards until he read _The Devil_ at the bottom. He had, as soon as that had registered, snatched his hand away and danced back into the kitchen cabinets behind him.

“Relax,” Adam had told him as he picked up the card from the tile floor. He held it to the sunlight coming through the window and studied it as though it was talking to him. “It's not meant to be an omen for doom or anything. It just means you're letting someone or something control you. This card is saying that you need to break away from that. That's a good thing. Now please get off the counter."

Now he was in a state of constant suspicion whenever he saw Adam doing something. Watering his plants? That had better be just a succulent, Parrish.

Once he had discovered that Adam carried his evil deck of cards with him _everywhere,_ Declan had made it a rule that he had to leave them in his car before coming into the house and show Declan that his pockets were empty. This never failed to make Adam roll his eyes to Ronan like this was Ronan’s fault.

Declan refused to pull any punches. Adam had literally told him that his deck was haunted by a dead person.

“How’d he die?” Declan had asked one night, washing the dishes after a fancier-than-usual dinner because Adam had been over for it. Ronan and their mother had broken out all of the family cookbooks. Thus, leaving quite a few dishes.

On _Declan’s_ night to clean them.

Fucking Ronan.

“She,” Adam had corrected as he was drying one of the plates, “and she looked into a mirror. Her spirit never returned.”

Declan hadn’t slept that night.

* * *

The notes slowly shifted from work-related to much more family-oriented as Ronan dug deeper and deeper into the room. It was as though he was peeling back layers of Declan’s personality. The superficial layer, purposely painted in business and college credits, hid the next one after it, the one that revolved around two specific people in Declan’s life.

Papers on subjects in his university classes turned into papers on Matthew’s grades, but it was dated as far back as November. It looked like Matthew didn’t do too well in any subject at Aglionby, except Latin, a natural talent for Lynches, but even then he was only topping off at 85%. Ronan had to wonder how much Matthew’s grades had suffered in the time since then. It was an odd thought in Ronan’s head, something he never thought about much. It was an uncomfortable thought, one he wouldn’t want to think about much.

Class schedules became schedules for parent-teacher conferences and dates for Matthew’s games that had already come to pass. Notes on his day to day life, _meeting w/ Randal @ 9,_ became notes on a life happening two hours away in Henrietta, _meeting w/ Lit teacher @ 2._

His eyes caught some color then, a surprise in the black and white printed forest he had been sifting through so far. He tugged out the collection of papers, pinned together at the bottom of the stack he had been holding. They were printed out from what seemed to be a website, marked and circled with red pen, and covered in sticky notes.

_Parental Guidance_

_The go-to guide for parents!_

Ronan had a brief moment of mild, secondhand panic as he wondered if Declan had possibly gotten some chick pregnant before he had gone missing. He had always suspected that would eventually happen. The panic heightened as he realized said chick could have possibly had the kid within the time Declan had been missing. The panic continued to steadily rise as he realized that there could be an infant Lynch out there being watched over by one of the dumb-as-shit vanity girls Declan would always introduce him to—

Then his eyes scanned the rest of the page and came across _Teen Boys._

The realization hit him like a freight train.

Declan was researching advice on how to take care of Matthew.

That was, until his eyes went to the parts of the article that had been circled and underlined. Then he realized he had gotten the wrong train, and was then hit by the correct one.

_What to do for your troubled teenager._

There were several pages, each with the brightly colored logo at the top with the web site's name, and each one crafted for the same subject.

 _He may feel pushed into a corner and become even more aggressive when you try to dominate him,_ advised one underlined sentence.

 _Remember that anger is often based on a fear of losing control,_ advised another.

 _If you want him to listen to you, or consider what you say, you need to earn his trust,_ advised one underlined twice.

All of this, having been highlighted by a marker held in Declan’s hand.

Below the notes were links that would have been clickable on-screen: Top Ten Tips to Deal With Anger Management in Teenagers, Signs of Teenage Depression, Is Your Teenager Depressed? Quiz.

All the links were printed not in blue, but purple, the color of already visited links.

The papers crunched in his grip. He lowered them and scrubbed his face with the side of his fist. He kept scrubbing until his eyes felt raw.

He took a deep breath and began peeling off the sticky notes. He recognized his brother’s neat, perfected handwriting, aligned enough to challenge a printer.

_Give more space. He needs his space._

He nearly dropped the papers as Matthew knocked into the doorframe behind him, but his brother hardly seemed to have noticed as he asked quite loudly, “Hey! Does this count as something?”

* * *

Declan squawked as his youngest brother catapulted over the back of the couch and nearly landed in his lap. He barely saved the popcorn bowl, a giant one to satiated the appetite of three young male Lynches, from toppling onto the floor.

“Matthew!” He held the bowl protectively whilst kicking his brother in the leg. “That is not proper indoor behavior.”

“ _In a world full of crime, top criminal experts make it their mission in life to seek out—“_

“Ronan!” Matthew hollered. “Show’s starting, man, come on!”

Declan looked over the couch and glared when he saw Ronan leaning against the doorframe, phone to his ear, lips speaking Latin. Declan swung up one of the couch’s throw pillows and chucked it at him, hitting him square in the face.

“No more Adam. It’s Friday, he knows the rules.”

Declan ducked as the pillow was launched back at him and flew over his head. He rolled his eyes as Matthew chased after it as a puppy would a stick.

The middle Lynch covered the phone with his hand and hissed, “He doesn’t get a lot of free time, you know.”

"Neither do I," Declan shot back, which he knew was rather mean. He could see the conflict happening in Ronan as he struggled between his boyfriend's attention and his older brother's. Both were college students, both had way too much crammed into their schedules than was probably healthy, and both wanted to spend time with Ronan more than any other person in the world.

But the fact of the matter was, if it was a war that was happening over who got Ronan, then Declan was going to fucking win.

Therefore, he picked up another pillow and flung it at him. “I didn’t drive all the way over here so you could bail out on me last minute. Tell him you’ll call in the morning and get over here, we’re already missing the beginning.”

Declan was a powerful guilt-tripper, but it was a terrible gift. He reserved it for only dire situations and this, he believed, counted as dire.

Ronan frowned and began saying a Latin goodbye into phone, probably interjected with insults of his older brother, seeing that his face was all pinched up as it usually was when he was insulting his older brother. It was a distinct look.

Meanwhile, Declan ducked so that Ronan wouldn’t see him over the back of the couch as he swiped up his phone from the coffee table. He quickly typed out to Adam,

_Its Friday night our shows on_

which he knew Adam would translate from Lynch language into,

_Go away_

It wasn’t that Declan hated Adam.

He only did when Adam started thinking he was more important in Ronan’s life than Declan was, because like hell he was. Declan had been there since the very beginning. How long had Adam known Ronan, three years? Please.

He hastily stuffed his phone between the couch cushions as Ronan walked over. He noticed Ronan didn’t have his phone with him anymore.

“There. Happy?”

Seeing as Declan had won this round against Parrish, he said, “Yes.”

Matthew bounded back with the neglected pillow, only to drop it unceremoniously onto the floor when his eyes caught sight of what was on the tv's screen.

“It’s on!”

Declan snatched up the bowl as Matthew leapt over the table and onto the couch. Ronan snickered as the impact had Declan tumbling halfway onto the floor, but the important thing was, that he had saved the popcorn. He held it up for Ronan to grab as Declan needed both his arms to push himself out from where he was now wedged between a couch and a coffee table.

“ _This week on_ Who Did It, _a woman coming home to the sound of her dog barking, only to find her husband, and father of their two teenage children, having bled to death in his own living room. Beside him lies the equally bloodied body of his former mistress. Who did it?”_

Matthew slammed twenty bucks on the coffee table. “It’s the wife!”

“Come on, Matthew,” Declan groaned. “That’s way too obvious.”

“That’s exactly why she did it.” His brother grinned at him. “No one would think she would do that because it’s so obvious.”

“Well, I think it’s one of the children, getting revenge on their father for cheating on their mother,” Declan said with confidence, placing his twenty on top of Matthew’s. He would decide which of the children later.

“Nah, man, that was a duel, between the dude and his ex.” Ronan sank onto the couch on Declan’s right, slamming his twenty on top of the pile and then swinging a foot onto the coffee table. “One of those two tried to kill the other, and they both ended up dead.”

“We are fucking civilized people, Ronan.” Declan sat up to smack his brother’s leg off the table. “Act like it.”

* * *

Perhaps D.C. was known for its strangeness. The pizza delivery woman hardly seemed fazed that the door was lying on the inside of the house. She simply rang the doorbell instead.

They had gathered at Declan's kitchen island, a grand thing but lacking much in the area of personality, very unlike the kitchen island at the Barns. The island at the Barns held giant stacks of Irish cookbooks, crystal bowls of both Ronan's and Niall's dream creations, and stray raven feathers. There was a coffee maker that made such enthusiastic beeping sounds whenever Ronan approached that he was pretty sure it was alive. They had silverware that had spoons on either end of the handle.

The only signs of life that Declan’s island had came in the form of all the newly bought pizza boxes, and the thing that Matthew had found, which they had placed on display in the center.

It was a ghost box.

Ronan couldn’t wrap his head around why Declan would even have one of those.

"So, he believes in ghosts?" Gansey began uncertainly.

“I guess?” was the best Ronan could come up with. Of all of his friends surrounding the island, one was the daughter of a psychic, the other _was_ a psychic, and the other had come back to life—twice. He didn’t believe in ghosts, he _knew_ of ghosts. He had no idea what his brother’s stance was on the subject, though.

It wasn’t that the ghost box had suggested any revelations on their quest to awaken Declan Lynch. It had merely happened to be one of the last things they had found before the pizza woman had arrived.

The others had brought their own items for their luncheon show-and-tell: a monthly planner from Gansey, a new suit that was still in its packaging from Adam, and a grocery list that had only gotten started with _hair gel_ from Blue. None were as interesting at the ghost box, however, and had quickly been discarded onto the kitchen floor.

“Unless he’s living a secret paranormal investigator life that none of us know about, then this can’t be a regular ghost box,” Adam said. He wiped his hands on a handtowel before picking up the device. “There’s something unique about it.”

“Like what?” Ronan asked through a biteful of pizza. Several days of worrying had made him starved.

Adam flipped the ghost box around. “Like this?”

 _Niall Lynch,_ read the bottom in very familiar handwriting.

Gansey shot up from his seat, palms braced against the counter. “A dream thing!”

“Cool,” Matthew said through his own mouthful.

“But, wait.” Blue leaned over to take the thing from Adam. It was easy to accomplish despite the vastness of the kitchen island, since Blue sat crossed-legged on top of it. Another thing, Ronan was certain, that would have upset his older brother if he had been there to see it. “Does it do anything different than a regular ghost box would?”

“Fucking hell,” was the first thing Ronan said when it was his turn to grab the box. “Declan has a bunch of Dad’s shit just lying around his place? The fuck. I’ve never even seen this."

Gansey beckoned with his fingers for him to hand it over. Richard Gansey the Third had plenty of experience with ghost boxes, and that was evident as he flipped out his reading glasses and looked the box over. Easily his fingers found the buttons to turn it on, the switches that created the static and cause the lights to flash red.

“Acts like any other one I’ve been acquainted with.”

“Then why wouldn’t he just buy one?” Blue asked. “Dream things are unpredictable, aren’t they? And he had enough to afford the best one he could get.”

“Probably didn’t trust the asshats who make those things,” Ronan said, earning a glare from Gansey, who had several of those asshats’ numbers on his phone.

The object went around the table, bypassing Matthew for the sake of keeping pizza sauce off of it, not that the youngest Lynch seemed to mind as he helped himself to another slice. The box acted as a microphone, letting whoever held it speak next on the matter.

Blue took her turn, holding the box and saying, “Think it would work on Declan? If it’s powered by dreams, it’s probably a lot stronger than a normal one.”

“Unlikely.” Adam held out his hand and she placed it in his palm. He looked it over with scrutiny. “That would only work if it had been dreamed to work in this kind of situation.”

Matthew took another bite of pizza. “Why not dream up one that does then?”

Everyone stared at him.

* * *

“ _Only one question now remains: Who did it?”_

Intense music played as the camera dramatically zoomed in on one character.

“ _The dog.”_

Declan didn’t even care when Ronan flipped the popcorn bowl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really, really didn’t want to break from my two-parter pattern but this montage thing just wanted to happen and throw off my synchronicity. *glares at chapter*
> 
> There’s always that one that just doesn’t wanna follow the routine. I have nicknamed this chapter “the trouble child.”
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	18. Smoke and Mirrors

  
_Friday, May 11_

_41 days until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

Ronan’s whole life had come to revolve around chasing sleepers. First, it had been his father, always off chasing his next big dream. Then it had been Glendower, the sleeping king. Already he had spent so much of his time trying to dream of something to wake someone up. Sleeping in the hopes of waking. Dreaming in the hopes of coming back to reality. His mother, before she had died, could only stay awake in Cabeswater. Without their father, she would fall back asleep once she stepped foot out of the forest. Matthew, should Ronan ever perish, would fall into the same sleep. 

Now he had Declan, who had happily waltz right into the same damn situation.

Out of everyone in the Lynch family, and that was including the honorary members of Gansey and Adam and Blue, Declan should have been the one person Ronan could rely on to not fucking to do that.

Gansey with his king, Blue and her psychic family, Adam and his trances, Matthew with his dream roots, his mom with her dream roots, and his dad…Even Ronan himself.

But Declan was the normal one. He was the puff of fresh air in a world of hallucinogen-induced scents. Some people were smoke, some carried the scent of flowers, some may have smelt good but would make your head light if you breathed it in for too long, and some were toxic to inhale. 

Declan, however, was normal, air-conditioned air, the kind that you didn't ever think about except when it wasn't available anymore. 

He supposed Declan must have been tired of being ignored and had decided to drop something into the air vents to shake things up. “No one will notice,” Declan would think. “No one ever pays attention to these vents anyhow. What’s the harm?”

Quite a lot of harm, actually, when there was no more clean air to breathe.

Now Ronan was fucking exhausted.

He hadn’t realized how much energy went into just worrying. Through the day, through the night, and every little moment in between. The worry accompanied him to every meal and every drive to the grocery store, every second he couldn’t sleep at night.

He could see it was starting to anger not just Adam anymore, but now Gansey and Blue. Not anger towards him, but Declan. He could see it in how they tensed when they entered the reading room and their eyes avoided the bed. Ronan could see it when he knew they were staring at him, at how he really didn’t feel like finishing breakfast, no matter how much they insisted.

“How the hell am I supposed to eat right now?” he would ask them. “I’ve got shit to do.”

“Just finish the granola bar,” Blue would say.

“No.”

“Half the granola bar,” Gansey would reason.

“I said no.”

“Ronan,” Adam would say, and he would refuse to leave the kitchen until he saw Ronan eat at least two.

Ronan himself had started getting angry. Only the thin walls of Fox Way kept him from flat-out yelling at Declan next to the bed, leaving him to resort to hissing and spitting like Declan could even hear him. That would only lead him to feeling guilt later on, sitting for hours in his car or in the kitchen if it was vacant, until he came back to apologize like Declan could hear that either.

More than once he had been found curled up next to that bed, back against the wall, eyes on the floor. Usually, it was Adam who found him, which, if he had to choose, he would have wanted Adam over anyone else. Adam never said anything. He only sat with him. 

Ronan felt like he had been going through the five stages of grief on an endless loop, like his mind couldn’t decide whether his brother was gone yet and if he should start the grieving process now or later.

The only thing that kept him occupied enough to ward off feeling anything was dreaming.

Matthew’s idea, a dream creation to contact Declan, had only been as good as Ronan’s ability to make it work, and so far, he hadn’t made it work yet.

Weeks had gone by of brainstorming, of outlining on paper, of dreaming at the Barns as he tried to make it happen, only to wake up with broken parts of what he had been imagining in his hands. It was as though even his dreams thought the idea too impossible.

Dreams were fickle things. Not all of his creations worked the way he had planned, and sometimes they never worked at all. Plenty of times he had created what his father had called “stress dreams” that were entirely useless. The Barns were filled with plenty of unnecessary creations his dad had insisted on keeping around only for the sake and love of it.

Right now, though, Ronan needed this to _work._

“Oh, there you are,” Adam said, as though he had only happened across Ronan instead of fully expecting him to be held up in the reader room next to the bed again. “I have an idea.”

The third attempt at dreaming lied discarded on the floor, next to the chair Ronan had been taking residence in for the past two hours. He knew it wouldn't work when it had started disintegrating in his hands and had promptly dropped it before the dust got all over Declan's blankets. He couldn't remember if Declan had allergies or not—he just knew Declan hated dust. And dirt. 

And grime.

And grease.

And really anything that wasn't lemon-scented with cleaning products. 

He supposed it was better than the last dream attempt, which had burst into flames when Ronan had pressed the button.

Blue and Gansey trailed in behind Adam, each carrying something. One of Blue’s items was a large hand towel, which she dutifully threw over the ashen dream thing dirtying the floor, as though she had expected a failed dream thing that needed to be covered up. Out of sight, out of mind.

Ronan sneered as he looked at Declan.

Out of sight, out of mind.

As soon as Ronan got back to the Barns, he was going to find a pocket-sized picture of his brother and stuff it into some sort of locket to carry around with his car keys.

“What’s the idea?” he asked, trying to sound interested.

Blue set the rest of her things down on the table in the center of the reading room, where Gansey had placed his things too. “We thought we'd try something more physical,” she told him.

“Like punching him?” Ronan asked, tempted. He’d admit that the thought had crossed his mind more than once. “Or dumping a bucket of ice water over his head?”

“Actually,” she began, “you’re not that far off.”

Ronan suddenly felt very protective. He placed a hand over Declan’s chest. “No.”

“Not like that,” Gansey assured, holding up one of the items to prove that.

Ronan squinted but couldn’t make out what it was in the shadowed room. He didn’t stop Blue when she walked over to pull the curtains open behind him, but flinched as the harsh light lit up everything in the room.

Ronan then saw the bundles of gray leaves Gansey clutched in his hands.

“Sage?” he asked disparagingly. 

Blue made a face. “Don’t be like that. It may not wake him up, but if we can override his senses, maybe he’ll know we’re here.”

Gansey put the sage down and pointed to her approvingly with his reading glasses. “That’d be a big step in the right direction.”

“Exactly,” she agreed, then turned to Ronan and said, “So stop being difficult and move over. You’re in the way.”

Ronan scuttered off to the side as everyone but he tended to their pre-decided jobs. 

Gansey dumped a collection of random plants and rocks all over the table from various cloth bags he had carried in, sweeping them into small piles. Blue fetched a plate from one of the shelves, large and ceramic and too heavily painted to have been made for something other than ceremonious. She held it up for Adam while he pulled together different amounts from all of the stuff on the table, wrapping it all in the sage quickly and tying it off.

Ronan watched this all unfold with a heavy sense of prepared disappointment.

With the strike of a match, Gansey lit the sage. Flames ate away at the leaves, devouring a fourth of it in a rush and taking Adam several tries to blow them out.

“That happens when there’s a lot of stuff in the room that needs burning,” Blue quipped, waving away the huge wafts of smoke left behind. “It burns more. I think Mom almost burnt down the kitchen a couple of times.”

Ronan glanced at Declan. He wondered which one of them needed the burning.

Gansey coughed into his hand, eyes watering. "Good to know it's working." 

An overwhelming smell of smoke fell over the room, followed by scents of other plants. Ronan thought he caught rosemary in there somewhere but other than that he had no idea what else they had thrown into it. 

His eyes watered too as Adam walked over and carried the smoke with him. Adam waved his handful of smoldering plants over Declan's head and down his body, around the bed and under it, until smoke had completely engulfed him. 

“Can he still breathe okay?” Ronan asked.

“It’s not going to suffocate him or anything, Ronan,” Adam promised. “It just needs to be strong enough to reach him in Cabeswater, but…”

The four of them looked down on Declan's unmoving figure. The rhythm of his breathing didn't change, his nose didn't twitch. 

Adam’s sigh sounded painful. “It’s too dense, whatever hold that creature has on him...It's not going to let us through this way, not physically." 

Gansey swore under his breath.

“I’m sorry, Ronan,” Blue whispered.

Ronan said nothing.

That night, Ronan slept at the Barns. Every mile away from Declan stung, but he had no choice. His dreams weren’t always safe, and he needed to dream. He needed to dream up something that could fix this, but he couldn’t do that at Fox Way.

The Fox Way women made many accommodations for him, letting him call before he planned to sleep that night, just so they could tell him what he already expected: "Don't worry, he's okay. We'll know the moment something changes and you'll be the first we'll call." 

So with that, he lied down on Declan’s bed and closed his eyes. He thought to himself that it was stupid, like staying in Declan’s room would make him feel closer to his brother somehow. He couldn’t imagine why it would anyway, not when Declan had stripped the room of what little personality he had put into it before he had moved to D.C., but Ronan didn’t get up from the bed.

He breathed carefully, trying to pick up on that cologne he hated somewhere on the sheets. He couldn't smell it. Instead, he picked up on something else. Something he couldn't place right away. He then shot up. 

He jumped out of the bed and ripped open drawer after drawer until he eventually found it on one of the shelves. He grabbed it and laughed, falling back onto the bed. He covered his face with one hand, cackling and trying not to cry. He held up the thing to look at it, a glass candle.

He left the room only to find matches in the kitchen, then came back and lit it until the room began to smell like—

He turned the glass candle around.

—Japonica Pumpkin Spiced Latte.

He didn’t even know what the fuck a japonica was.

He was also at least ninety-percent certain that Declan didn’t drink pumpkin spiced anything. He had no idea what kind of coffee he would always catch him drinking, but he was pretty sure he would have smelt pumpkin.

His brother did, Ronan remembered, love their mom’s pumpkin pie though.

He placed the candle on the nightstand and lied back down on the bed, looked up on his phone what a japonica was (a kind of flower), and closed his eyes again.

Sleeping came much easier then.

He had two kinds of dreams: the ones that other people had, and the ones where he could bring something back when he woke up.

He knew he had entered the second one when he saw Cabeswater. The second one always happened in Cabeswater.

The trees didn't greet him as they usually did, but that was fine. He wasn't in the mood to talk to them. Every time he had dreamed of them, he would tell them the same thing, "Bring back my brother," and he was always denied. 

He began walking, searching for an object he had not imagined yet. Within seconds his foot had hit something, taking him by surprise. The past few times he had tried dreaming something up, it had taken him a while of wandering before he found something he could work with. Then he would have to hold it and begin putting together the details before he could bring it back.

He stared down in bewilderment at an already detailed, perfectly sculpted ghost box.

He scooped it up, turning it over in his hands.

“Can you help me wake my brother?” he asked it, or rather, asked himself. He found the button on its side and pushed it.

An explosion wouldn’t have startled him, but what did was when the light on the front lit up in red instead of green. He didn’t know much about ghost boxes, but what he did know from Gansey, was when the light turned red, it was detecting something nearby. Or someone.

“Ronan?”

His head shot up. “Declan?”

Declan’s voice hadn’t come from the box. It had come from somewhere in the forest. What the box did, however, was flash even brighter.

“Ronan?” He heard again, even louder now, more clear. Closer.

He heard it from the left and shot off in that direction.

"Declan!"

“Ronan!” he heard Declan’s voice echo back, bland as always but now with a tinge of worry, a dash of irritation that he couldn’t see Ronan yet. “Where the hell are you?”

He jumped over a fallen log. “I’m over here!”

_“Where?”_

“Here!”

“Fucking hold still then! I think we keep missing—”

Ronan rounded a tree.

Declan had rounded the same tree at the very same moment.

For a beat, they only stood there, less than a few feet apart, breathing heavily.

“Ronan?” Declan asked, uncertain. He looked Ronan up and down. “That...Is that you?”

Ronan felt his voice crack before he heard it. “You can see me?”

“Is that not what I’m doing right now?”

Ronan snickered and wiped the tears from his face. He took an experimental step forward, then Declan did the same, and then they smiled and crashed into each other. Ronan buried his face in his shoulder, smelling that same cologne. He felt the well-ironed shirt beneath his face, the strong arms pulling him into a hug.

“I missed you," he managed to say.

Declan pulled back to smile at him. He noticed the ghost box still in one of Ronan’s hands and carefully took it from him. Still smiling, he smashed it into the side of Ronan’s head.

Ronan had two kinds of dreams: ones that other people had, and ones that caused physical pain.

He was definitely in the second one.

"You are—" Declan tossed the box over his shoulder. It collapsed into smoke before it even touched the ground. "—the most fucking irritating blight of my existence." 

Ronan couldn't see clearly from where he was lying on the forest floor. Once his vision steadied, he almost wished it hadn't, because Declan's face wasn't his face anymore. It was still familiar to him, though, familiar in a way that his reflection was so familiar.

Gone were the long curls, the strong jaw, and the neat clothing. All were replaced by a spitting image of Ronan, except with a far too twisted expression. 

“Would you just stop?” Declan’s voice was gone too, replaced by Ronan’s own as the doppelgänger stood over him.

Furious, Ronan jumped to his feet. He took a swing, but it went right through the thing again. “Damn it!”

"The only reason I don't kill you...is because you are the thing that keeps me alive.” The dream creature was truly a darker version of himself, looking precisely like Ronan if Ronan had been drenched in shadows. The only part of it that was brighter was its eyes, which were so bright they were on the verge of becoming demonic. “Believe me, if there was a loophole I would set you on fire.”

Ronan snarled and flinched as the thing spat at him.

“Your little smoke signal isn’t gonna wake him, you know,” it growled. Literally, growled. He had to wonder if his doppelgänger was partially animal. “You’re only going to make this whole process uncomfortable for him, like an asshole.”

“How are you in my dreams?” Ronan demanded.

The doppelgänger inhaled deeply. “I swear, it’s like...it’s like talking to Declan all over again—Okay, you created Cabeswater, right?”

Ronan hated how the thing was talking to him. "Yeah.”

“And through Cabeswater, Declan created me.” The thing arched an eyebrow at him. “So, in order: you, Cabeswater, Declan, me. We’re all linked to your dreams. I’ve got the goddamn key to come in here, so don’t make me come in here again.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So, wouldn’t _Declan_ be able to come in here?”

“Of course,” the thing said. “If I would let him.”

“And why is that?” Ronan tried to shove the thing back, forgetting that his hands would go right through. He snapped his hands back, disgusted, while the doppelgänger merely looked tired with his antics. “Why do you call the shots when it’s Declan’s damn dream to begin with?”

The thing leaned against the tree—

Oh, so the _tree_ could touch him. Ronan promptly punched the tree out of fury.

The thing watched this with very little interest, as though it had other pressing matters to attend to.

“Because his entire fucking life revolves around you.” Like Ronan had, the thing narrowed its eyes. “Of course you’d be in charge, you’ve always have been, except you’d never show up. Kinda hard to live life when the sun never comes out, huh?”

Ronan stared at him, not knowing how to respond to that.

Even if he had, he didn't think the doppelgänger would have listened, because it shook its head then and pushed off the tree. "Whatever. Just leave me and Declan alone before you do any more harm." 

“I’d never harm him.”

Bloody noses and deep cutting words flashed through his mind.

“Not...” Ronan tightened his fists. He couldn’t imagine hurting Declan so badly that Declan would have decided that life was no longer worth it. Ronan would have never have gone that far. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

“You’ve always caused him harm.” Unfairly, the thing clutched the neck of Ronan’s shirt and pulled him closer. Its breath smelled of poison as it hissed. “And knowing you, that’s never going to stop until I get him the fuck away from you.”

* * *

  
Declan was no stranger to hospitals.

Fights with his brother.

Attacks by hitmen.

Occasional farm-related accidents.

Occasional dream-related accidents.

But this was a new one.

He felt his ears burn, embarrassed to be sitting on a hospital bed with not one, but both of his parents present in the room with him. He was glad they were there (really, he was) but he was twenty-years-old and at that moment he felt more like he was five.

He had needed someone to drive him in though. Well, not “need” by his definitions. To Declan, "needing" someone meant he was either: (A) unconscious, (B) almost unconscious and unable to operate a vehicle, or ( C ) dead and needed someone to arrange the funeral. 

Ronan had offered to drive him in on the spot, almost demanded that he did, but Declan hated his brothers seeing him in such a weakened state. He knew it was stupid but he couldn’t shake off the sting of his little brothers seeing him so shaken and upset. He didn’t like his parents seeing him like that either, but he had wanted his dad, and leaving Aurora behind was out of the question. Just getting her to let go of his hand so he could go take the X-rays had taken some convincing.

Currently, she found it necessary to have both her hands on either of his shoulders as she stood next to his bed. She pressed a kiss to his forehead. 

“It’s okay, my baby. They’ll fix whatever happened.” She smoothed down his hair. 

His ears burned hotter as he prayed for his mother not to be doing this when the doctor came back. “Thanks, Mom.”

Meanwhile, his father had his arms crossed, leaning against the wall near the door and scaring every healthcare practitioner that walked by it.

“Dad,” Declan scolded, looking over his over six-foot-tall father with his long, unruly hair. “Stop it before they call security on you.”

Niall didn’t acknowledge Declan, his usual answer for, “You’re right but I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Declan let his head fall into his hand as his mother continued petting him.

Less than two hours ago, it had been panic at the Lynch family household.

Here Declan had been, half-awake in the kitchen, up before everyone else, as usual, making his morning coffee and trying to find his favorite mug with half-open eyes, when suddenly he couldn’t fucking breathe.

All he could smell was smoke and had looked around frantically for the source of it only to realize there _was_ no source of it. His ability to breathe hadn’t been jeopardized, but all the air he took in didn’t seem to be breathable anymore. His lungs and throat burned and the extreme urge to cough had him hacking over the counter space. He dropped his mug. It shattered at his feet.

He had felt overwhelming panic before, but that had only happened when something was wrong, and things had only ever been wrong with someone else. The dreamers of the family, the dreams of the family, they could very well have a problem at any given moment. He, however, was just a normal person, non-magical and rather dull, not at all expected to suddenly have a crisis in the middle of the kitchen.

But then something had been wrong with _him._

He couldn’t tell if his body was keeping him from getting oxygen or if his rising tide of panic was. Either way, his chest had begun hurting and his eyes had started tearing from fear.

He had started screaming and crying for anyone who could hear him.

Not his proudest moment, but within seconds everyone had awoken and rushed down the stairs. His father had already started going through the motions of emergency aid before the person over the phone could instruct him to do so. His mother had him wrapped up in her arms in an instant, shushing him and brushing his hair out of his face while Matthew looked on from the side and fretted with the edges of his sweatshirt. He had brought him a glass of water and even though Declan hadn’t felt like drinking it, he did anyway so that Matthew would feel better. Even Ronan’s bird had been stalking back and forth across the counter worriedly.

Wouldn’t want to lose her favorite source of nesting material, Declan supposed.

And then there had been Ronan.

He had been furious, beyond Declan’s comprehension. It was as though Declan’s lack of oxygen was a person Ronan thought he could pummel. Even while shaking and gasping in breaths Declan had found the exasperation to roll his eyes.

“Anything in pain,” his father had demanded, pushing his son’s bangs back to check his temperature.

“No.”

“Feeling light-headed or woozy.”

“No.”

“Shakey or unsteady,” he continued, checking the color of Declan’s eyes, his lips, the inside of his mouth and now Declan wanted to stop being prodded at.

He pushed his father’s hand away. “No.”

His father glared. “You’re lying to me.”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“Ronan!” Niall looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Get your ass over here and talk to your brother because he’s not telling me shit.”

“Dad, I’m fine now!”

Ronan marched over with an expression meant to slice. “Are you fine?” he asked him.

Declan hesitated. He had made a promise never to lie to Ronan again. 

“I, well...” he began lamely. “Well...I could be finer." 

His entire family groaned. Declan refused to make eye contact with any of them.

Two hours later, Declan and his parents were staring in befuddlement at what a doctor had just told them.

“Asthma?”

“That’s what we suspect,” explained Dr. Phillips. “It's too soon to diagnose now since asthma is a recurring condition, but it's the most likely suspect. I suggest coming back for more tests to monitor it, and then I can diagnose it properly." 

“How do you not know what it is already? Isn’t this your job?”

“Dad,” Declan warned. He lifted a hand to signal the doctor to focus on him instead. “I’m sorry, we’re all just a little confused. I thought asthma was genetic.”

“Not in all cases. Usually, if it were genetic, you would have shown symptoms long before now. This could have been caused by environmental factors.”

“Oh, dear.” Aurora’s grip tightened on her son’s shoulders. Declan had a feeling that she had no idea what asthma was, just that she was worried that her son had it. He lifted a hand to squeeze one of hers.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he whispered to her, and then to the doctor asked, “It isn’t too bad, is it?”

“Oh, no.” The doctor waved such a suggestion off. “Your vitals actually came back quite strong, and your lungs look good, nothing seems to have taken any damage, oxygen level is up to speed...However.”

Declan resisted a sigh. There was always a “however” or something of the sort tacked on at the end. If he ever wrote an autobiography, he planned to have it named “However” or “But Wait! There’s More.”

“If it’s severe enough to block your airway when these attacks do happen, then you’re most likely going to need to carry an inhaler with you at all times.”

Declan stared at the doctor.

“You’re gonna need me to do what.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Back to my original word count goals! I don't want to hit you guys with long chapters too often, especially since the finale chapters are on the way and I don't know how much self control I'll have to reign it in for those XD
> 
> Also, I did post this on a Sunday, even though I prefer to keep it to Fridays, if not Saturdays, but with current events that's been a bit difficult compared to usual. I'll still try to keep it to every other weekend, though!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed today's chapter! Have a great day, y'all!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	19. Sunday Mournings

_Sunday, May 20_

_32 days until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

Ronan Lynch believed in heaven and hell.

He wasn’t sure which one his father had gone to.

He knew the one his mother had.

He didn’t know which one he would go to.

He knew the one Matthew would.

But he knew Declan, if he died like this, would go to neither.

Cabeswater would truly take him away forever.

It was a realization that had left him awake and haunted in his car through the rest of the day and the whole of night. In this dark and hopeless place, it was all he could do to not walk into 300 Fox Way and end his brother's life, just so he would have a chance of one day going to the same place Declan would.

He was forcibly pulled from his thoughts as Matthew shifted in the passenger seat beside him. His worry jumped several notches when he turned off the music. Matthew never did that.

Ronan sunk his teeth into his bottom lip. He still hadn’t told him what had happened to their older brother.

How could he?

Having his younger brother continue to believe that Declan was “missing” and “ignoring their calls” was a far better fate than what might as well be a coma.

Matthew had already lost half of his parents, and then both of his parents. Ronan wasn’t going to restart the grief at losing half his brothers.

“Do you think he’s okay?”

Declan was an expert at lying, not Ronan. The best Ronan could do was avoid.

“Matthew, it’s Declan. He’s a goddamn cockroach. Nothing’s gonna get to him.”

“Yeah, but...” Matthew settled back down into his seat, frown pointed at the windshield. “Is he in trouble or something?”

He spared him a smile and tousled his hair. “If he is, we’ll take care of it.”

“It’s just super weird. He always talks to me. He doesn’t tell me everything, but he still talks to me. Do you think...” Matthew stared down at his hands, trying to think. When he decided, he looked up to Ronan. “Do you think I pushed him away?”

There was no way that Matthew could have known exactly how sharp of a knife he had just cut Ronan with, and Ronan wasn’t planning to let him figure it out either.

He held it together. “No. You did nothing wrong. Just...stop thinking about it.”

“But I never listened.” His brother yanked on the cuff of his sleeves. “He’d tell me stuff and I kept doing it, like getting crumbs in his car, or...forgetting my books at the park again. I didn’t do it on purpose...I just kept forgetting.”

Ronan could see his brother’s eyes glossing in corner of his eye. He reached out a hand and gripped his shoulder.

“Don’t be stupid. He never gets mad at you, you know that.”

Matthew sniffed. 

He had hoped that all mentions of Declan had been left behind as they walked up the steps of St. Agnes, but then Matthew asked, “You think he’s at a different church right now?”

Yes and no, Ronan thought. His brother was likely at the same church just copied and pasted into a fake version of Henrietta, probably walking up identical steps with a fake Matthew and a motherfucking evil Ronan at his side.

Ronan could picture that creature’s smile, pointed at him as he and Declan walked up the steps.

 _“You never missed this,”_ the creature would hiss to him, walking backward into the church. _“Why miss it now?”_

Ronan’s fist tightened on the handle of the church door.

“You know he never skips church,” he told Matthew, pushing open the door for him.

Ronan couldn’t help but share a look with his brother as they sat in the pew they had been sitting in for the past several years. The two of them had been the only ones to sit in it since December, and neither had noticed any difference from when there had been three. 

The first two or three weeks that Declan had been absent from church, Ronan had been giddy with relief and Matthew had been puzzled. By the fourth and fifth week, they had forgotten there had once been more than just the two of them sitting at the Lynch pew every Sunday. On rare occasions, they would briefly miss the presence of their father (usually in Ronan’s case) or their mother (usually in Matthew’s).

Ronan realized not once had he missed having Declan sitting next to him. He didn’t think Matthew had either.

Declan would have missed both of them, though. Ronan knew that. His brother wouldn’t have driven four hours every week there and back if he hadn’t.

It didn’t look odd to have someone bow their heads in church, forehead resting on their linked fingers, and Ronan was grateful for that as he held that position for nearly the rest of the service.

_You never missed this._

_Why miss it now?_

He couldn’t tell if he was thinking about that creature, or if it was in his head. The creature would be too busy to be in his head, he guessed, since right about now, it would be at church with Declan just as Ronan was with Matthew. 

His head shot up.

The creature could be in his head, when he was dreaming.

The creature could visit Ronan in his dreams.

Ronan couldn’t think of a single reason, then, why he couldn’t visit _it._

Matthew leaned closer to him and whispered, “What is it?”

“If there was a person keeping him from us,” Ronan began, meeting his gaze, “how hard would you hit that person?”

Matthew looked at him and said, “Hard.”

* * *

“Morning, Dad—”

Declan had just opened the door, eyes focused on not dropping the plate of food he balanced in his other hand. All that focus was for naught as he screamed and dropped to the floor, narrowingly avoiding a projectile object shooting over his head and rocketing down the hallway. Still on the floor, head covered, he watched the thing spin in aimless circles before disappearing down the stairs. He frowned as he heard a crash that definitely had involved glass. 

"That had better have not been the pictures," he muttered, then jumped to his feet. He looked down. The plate had stayed intact, but the floor was littered with the ruined remains of his mother's specially made French toast. She only made those once a week. Seeing it go to waste was a crime. 

“Declan,” his father said from within the room. It sounded like he meant to say, _Are you hurt?_

“Dad!” he shouted, spinning to face him. “It’s Sunday!”

“Is it?” Niall Lynch looked shocked. He looked down at what had become of the French toast at his son’s feet. He looked justifiably heartbroken at the sight. “Ah. So it seems.”

 _“Dad.”_ Declan felt his ears burning with frustration. “You _know_ it’s Sunday!” Declan knew that because his father had made a point of lying out his church clothes the night before, just like he was making a point of lying to Declan now.

He wasn’t even going to pretend to fall for it.

Lies were a strong trait among the Lynches. They were all liars, in one way or another, but some had sworn against it, in exceptional circumstances. Ronan claimed he never lied—which was still bullshit in Declan’s opinion—and in return, Niall and Declan had sworn to never lie to him, and exclusively him.

But Niall and Declan had no issues with lying to each other. As fellow liars, though, it proved rather pointless.

That didn’t stop them from doing it, though.

“I doubt I could remember that through an entire night of dreaming, son.”

“You shouldn’t have been dreaming to begin with! No dreaming allowed on _Sundays.”_

It was the one day of the week that Declan didn't have to worry about sleeping with a fire extinguisher sitting next to his bed the night before. He still did though, but at least he didn’t have to worry about it.

“Dad!” Ronan’s voice carried up from the stairs. He sounded simply giddy as he shouted, “There’s a rocket in the living room!”

“A _rocket!?”_ Declan abandoned his father to bolt down the stairs. “Get it outside! Out, out, out!”

If that thing exploded, there went the pictures.

He would have been pissed for the rest of the day if his phone hadn’t started ringing twenty minutes later. He left his father and brothers to carry the rocket the rest of the way across the fields to the unnamed section they had dubbed as their dismantling spot for possibly unstable dream things. The only structure located close enough to have the risk of getting hit was an old wood house that Declan suspected his father secretly wanted to get hit so he wouldn’t have to clean it out.

When the ringing hit his ears, Declan promptly left the weight of the rocket to the partner helping him carry that side. With Ronan and Matthew carrying the other side, that left all the weight to Niall, who nearly buckled from it and gave his eldest a venomous glare. 

Ronan and Matthew glanced at each other as Declan pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

“Oh, look. Work,” he lied as he read the caller ID. “It’s urgent.” Lie. “Be right back.” Lie.

He ignored the look Ronan was giving him the same way he ignored their father’s.

“Isn’t this a _little_ more important?” his brother asked.

“Been waiting on this call.” He shrugged. “Sorry, It’s pretty important. I have to take it.”

Lie lie, lie lie lie.

If it hadn't been a possibly combustible object they had been carrying, Declan knew his father would have dropped it then and there and snatched the back of his shirt collar. Since it _was_ a possibly combustible object, Declan turned on his heels and walked away without another word. 

No dreaming on Sundays, that was the rule. His father could reap the consequences and Declan would reap whatever punishment his father would fling at him later. Weed the gardens, muck the stalls, usually outdoor stuff because he knew how much his son hated dirt, yada yada yada.

“Declan,” his dad said, except it didn’t sound like he meant to say _Declan_. It sounded like he meant to say,

_Don’t you fucking dare._

Except Declan did fucking dare. He kept walking.

_“Declan.”_

He kept walking.

_“DECLAN.”_

The little blue flowers in the fields looked so nice today. Maybe he should bring a couple back to give to his mom. She would like that.

“You just wait _until I get over there—”_

“Dad, the thing. Don’t wanna drop the thing. Dad, the side there, watch that side—!”

Declan had reached the mansion’s porch by the time he heard the explosion go off in the fields. It sounded small, so he ignored it and put the phone to his ear.

"Declan Lynch," he answered. 

A little whine replied to him, even higher-pitched through the phone. “Declan! Why do you always have to talk to me like that? I’m not calling you to tell you that your tax deductions went through.”

“Sorry, Ash. Force of habit.”

“Well, force yourself out of habit before I start calling you Mr. Lynch or some shit.”

He grinned. “Well, I mean we could—”

“You are going to drop that train of thought right now.”

He pressed a fist to his mouth to stifle his chuckling.

"So, like, subject change," she said, sounding all business despite her apparent aversion of such. "I'm coming over today." 

He brightened. “You are? To Henrietta?” 

Already plans were flashing through his head. He had tried out so many new diners and parks in the past few months. He imagined how excited she would be when he showed them off to her. She always enjoyed his attempts to impress her, despite both of them knowing that she really didn't need to be. Still, it had been a game they had played when they had first met, back when the average length of a relationship topped out at a month for either one of them, and it just kind of never ended. 

“Yeah. I'm in the car with Bethy 'cause she has this thing or something she has to do there, so she's just gonna, like, drop me off. We're already halfway there, I think." Her voice became distant then. "Beth, we're like halfway, right? I remember it's right around here is halfway...No, this is halfway. Look at the signs. Look." 

He had just been about to offer to come to pick her up, and now he was even more excited. "That's perfect timing. You'll get here right around when church is over." 

She made an _ugh_ sound at the mention of his religion.

It never bothered him. He simply shrugged it off and went back to his mental list of where to take her first. He was thinking he should show her the bowling alley. The food wasn't the best, but he could take her out to eat afterward. "Have her drop you off outside St. Agnes, or you could go to the nail salon and I'll—" 

“Yeah, she’s just taking me to the church. I’ll just wait ‘til your done or whatever.”

He beamed. “Wonderful. Did you have breakfast today? There’s this place that makes really good—”

“Actually, I was thinking I could hang out with your family.”

All that excitement he had felt before suddenly died. “You want to what?”

“I mean, obviously I’ll be hanging out with you too. No need to get so testy about it.”

“Uh, no, I didn’t mean—I mean, I mean you—What? Why do you want to see my family?”

He turned his head when he noticed Ronan approaching the porch. His brother always dressed in black, but today he was also sporting black smudge all across his face and arms as well as a black distaste in his eyes. Declan would have felt apologetic except now he was more concerned with just how pissed his dad was going to be later on. At least none of them had put on their church clothes yet.

He put a finger to his lips to let Ronan know he was engaged in a conversation, then returned his focus to what Ash was saying on the other end.

“—think it’s kinda weird that I don’t, like, know them that much yet? You’ve already met my family—”

Declan had. He had dazzled them with his manners and purposefully nonchalant mentions of which college he was attending.

“—so it’s only fair that I get to know yours just as well. So, like, hence my coming over or whatever.”

He jumped as Ronan knocked into his shoulder. He hadn’t realized that he had completely closed the distance between them.

“Who the shit was so important that you left us with an explosive? You wanna know how mad Dad is right now?”

Declan shushed him and tilted his head at his phone.

“Babe? Are you, like, even listening to me right now?”

"'Course I am," he said with confidence. "Just one of my brothers." He then addressed Ronan loudly enough that Ash could hear him, "I'm on a phone call right now, we’ll talk later.”

He turned away and went back to the current issue at hand. 

“Alright, first and foremost, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he began. “I’d rather hang out, just you and me.”

He sighed as Ashley made a sound he recognized as disapproval. He heard it a lot, but he had also learned how to deal with it a lot. Today, however, he had a feeling she was going to be a bit more stubborn than usual.

Shit. What to do to take her mind away from such dangerous topics, such as his family? He wracked his brain for ideas as she complained on the other end.

“You can’t keep me from them for, like, ever, you know. With how much you talk about them and do stuff with them, they sound kinda important to your life so, like, shouldn’t they be important in mine?”

His chest ached as she spoke those words. He hadn’t expected that. “I mean, of course, if that’s what you want. It’s just, at this very moment—”

“Hey, is that Ashley?”

Declan shushed Ronan again. Was he really going to make him put on his shoes again and wander the fields just to finish his phone call? "Yes, now be—" 

Ronan cupped his hands and screamed, “GO BACK TO THE REALMS OF HELL IN WHICH YOU CAME FROM.”

Declan screeched, _"Ronan!”_

 _“What_ did that bitch-ass little _shit_ just say to me?” Ashley’s voice had taken on an entirely different tone over the phone.

“Nothing! He’s just being stupid—”

“WITCHES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.”

_“Ronan, shut up!”_

“You tell that gutless asshole to say that to my face!”

“Look, call me back later, okay—”

“GO AWAY AND NEVER RETURN.”

_“Ronan, I swear to God—”_

“I will fuck up his face so badly his access to heaven will be denied!”

_“Talk to you later okay love you bye.”_

Declan hung up and spun around. Fuming.

“Are you actively trying to get her to break up—”

Ronan cut him off a with a cheerfully snickered, “Yes.”

“I’ve never done that to you, you know.” Guilt-tripping, activated. “And I have a very compelling reason to, but I don’t. I don’t give Adam shit for all his, his, that, you know—“ Declan tapped his fingers against his thigh. He really didn’t want to utter the word _psychic._ “—that stuff he does, but you can’t leave me be with Ashley? What, because you don’t like her?”

Ronan made a face but said nothing, and that was how Declan knew he had won this round. 

Just to piss him off, he walked away without another word and made certain that the door shut behind him with a fervent _slam._

Having officially angered the two angriest people in the family, Declan, smartly so, sought out his mother. He would hover by her for the rest of breakfast.

No one could kill him if Aurora was there, that was the rule, that was a thing. There was nothing he could if Ronan or his father dragged him into the hallway, however, and so he’d have to avoid hanging out in doorways. 

He brightened as he found her in the kitchen, pulling together the cookies she had made the evening before, transferring them from the cooling rack to a decorative pan. They were for church, but surely she would let her beloved oldest son have a few beforehand. 

“Are those oatmeal?” Those were his favorite.

“Declan!” His mother perked up at the sight of him. Instead of offering him one of the cookies still on the cooling rack, though, she asked, “When was the last time you used your inhaler?”

Declan immediately frowned. “I’ll know when to use it, Mom, don’t worry.”

“When was the last time you used it?”

“Not that long ago.”

“When?”

“Not long.”

“When?”

He stared at the floorboards and grumbled.

Aurora Lynch would not be deterred. She placed the pan of cookies on the counter behind her, holding them hostage, and picked up one of the papers from the drug store. She had kept them on the windowsill for easy access since they had brought them home. "Says here every four to six hours, Declan. Has it been four to six hours?”

“Yes...”

“Have you taken it?”

“No...”

She stared at him.

He gritted his teeth.

Damn it.

"Can I have a cookie first? It'll taste bad if I use it first..." 

She shook her head, gave a sigh, and moved aside to offer the pan. “Promise me you’ll use it right after.”

He kissed her on the cheek and snatched three cookies in one hand. “I promise,” he said, and snatched a fourth one in the other.

He took his sweet time finishing the cookies and was utterly bitter when Ronan walked by and stole one. Ronan didn't even like oatmeal raisin—Declan knew that his favorite was sugar, especially the sugar cookie recipe saved for Christmas—but he supposed that annoying the fuck out of his older brother carried its own special flavor. 

He punted taking out his inhaler until right before they left the house, certain they would all ask him about it before allowing him to get into his car.

He pulled it out of his pocket and shook it as he would a protein shake before drinking it, except he glared at it the entire time.

He hated the thing. It felt like his lungs were getting punched with oxygen. His pulmonologist had explained that once he got the hang of it, it would happen less, but no matter how careful he was, he could still feel the sickly aftertaste of the medicine coating the back of his throat. He would gag and either Ronan or Matthew would end up patting his back and standing near him while he pressed his face against the wall and struggled not to dry heave. For the next hour, he couldn't eat or drink anything, not because he wasn't allowed to, but because anything he put in his mouth became tainted with that God-forsaken medicine. He felt green just recalling the taste of it. 

The car ride into town went about as well as expected: he drove nauseated the entire time, wishing he could have gone in the family car with the rest of the Lynches, but if Ash was coming over that day, he was going to need a second vehicle. It might have been a blessing, he supposed, to be by himself than trapped in a car where he could feel the animosity coming off of his father and brother.

Either way, it would be fine, he told himself. It wasn’t a day in the Lynch household if he hadn’t pissed off at least one of them off. Today he just ended up pissing off both.

He glanced down at his watch. 

And it was still early.

He remained in his woozy, dissociated state until they had entered the church and located the usual pews their family occupied. At that point he simply didn’t care to pull himself out of it, he’d rather doze through the sermon until the taste in his mouth faded. He propped his head up with an elbow against the arm of the booth, prepared to remain in that position for an unforeseeable amount of time.

He flinched as droplets of water struck his face. Instantly he knew the culprit.

He blinked open his eyes. “What was that for?” he asked, trying and failing to appear unamused.

Ronan, the bastard, saw right through his attempts and smiled more smugly. He rubbed the rest of the Holy Water over his hands as he said, “For your face, of course.”

He frowned. “What’s wrong with my face?”

His brother slid into the spot next to him. “Sorry, but I don’t answer rhetorical questions.”

He smacked his chest with the back of his hand. “You are such an asshole.”

He felt his heart jump as two gasps sounded from behind him.

“Declan Lynch,” two very disapproving voices said at once.

He looked back, having forgotten that their parents were sitting in the pew directly behind theirs, his mother looking stricken, his father peeved. His Mom and Dad, at church with the Lynch brothers once more, like they had during a time when Ronan and Declan knew better than to swear at each other on Sundays. 

Declan instantly felt terrible. He was the good son, he knew better than that. “Shit, sorry. I usually don’t—”

“Declan!”

Their respected expressions doubled in intensity, and he doubled in guilt as he pressed a fist to his forehead. He hadn't realized how lax he had gotten without his parents around, he had always thought himself a classy young man, and Ronan's out-loud laughter next to him wasn't helping. 

He spun on him, glaring flames, and without thinking snarled, “Fuck off!”

_“DECLAN!”_

Niall Lynch surged up from his seat like he was about to drag his eldest son out the church doors by his hair. Declan, startled, stumbled back and toppled off his seat, hitting the back of his head on the pew in front of them with an audible _smack_. Ronan had tears streaming down his face as he too fell off, laughing. His mother was trying to calm her husband down and convince him to not climb over the back of the pew to reach the boys. Matthew had his head in his hands. It was chaos over by the Lynch family.

But everyone else in the church was quiet.

By the time the service ended, the back of Declan’s head still hurt, but it had been the best Sunday he had had in a long time.

Nevertheless, he wasn’t about to push his luck.

When everyone made to stand, he jumped out of the pew first, wanting to make for the doors before his father could claw at him. Ronan and Matthew caught on and dashed after him, darting around the crowd of people in a less than polite manner for a trio of Christian boys.

Ronan skidded across the smooth wooden floors and slid out the door next to Declan. "Well, Dad's gonna kill you."

Declan, not daring to slow, walked backwards to descend the stairs and said, "Can only kill me if I get caught."

Matthew hurried to keep up. "What makes you think you won't be?"

"Easy. I just gotta be faster."

"Faster than Dad?"

"Faster than Ronan."

"Hey!"

Usually, Declan chatted with his brothers from the instant they stood from the pew, down the church steps, all the way to the car, to the diner, and up until he couldn't speak with a mouthful of food. By then, they would take turns at intervals between talking and eating, rather than wrestling for who got the lead role in the conversation. Randal invited Declan to a spring event, Ronan was trying to see if he could dream into existence an entire fucking lake so they could all go swimming this summer, which reminded Matthew of when he had fallen out of a canoe during rowing practice and had saluted his classmates on the way down. Back and forth, back and forth.

Today, however, was a special occasion.

Declan spotted Ashley waiting for him next to the Volvo. She lowered her sunglasses, rich brown eyes gleaming at him as she grinned.

He beamed and raced off the steps before he could hear his brothers picking on him about it. He pulled her into a hug, the same time she wrapped her arms around his neck. She smelled like the nail parlor she had just been at. 

“You didn’t have to wait here for me,” he told her, in a way that said _I’m really happy you did though._

The brief, happy moment, filled with the scent of the nail parlor and Declan's cologne, ended quickly as a voice interjected with, “Still afraid you’ll burn if you come inside?”

Challenged, Ashley immediately shoved Declan aside so Ronan could see the full intent of her glare as she whipped off her designer sunglasses. She snapped them close with the effect of someone who was clearly imagining that they were snapping something else, like a neck.

She arched an eyebrow. “Still afraid you’ll burn if you don’t?”

Whenever Declan worried that he was being immature when it came to how he handled Adam Parrish, he just remembered moments like this, and he felt much more secure in his reasonings, as compared to what he was witnessing now. 

He looked between them with a very tired expression. "Guys," he said, like that would make any difference. 

“What?” Ashley dared him, “Like I’m gonna let this ass walk all over me.”

“I doubt I’m the first ass to do the walking.”

“I don’t expect anyone to be walking anywhere except at the park for our stroll.” Declan checked his watch. “Which we need to get a move on if we’re going to make lunch on time.”

He remembered then that he hadn't checked his emails that morning, and decided to hand the Volvo's keys over to Ashley so he could do that on the drive. He tried not to notice how Ronan visibly bared his teeth. A Lynch only handed over the control of his car to the most trusted and intimate of companions, and it was clear that Ronan did not consider her a worthy candidate. 

“Ronan, if you want to drive with the family, that’s completely okay,” he said as he pointed at the family car. Technically, it was more of their father’s car than the _family_ car, but Declan had noticed that calling it the ‘family car’ had irritated their father and thus, he continued to call it that. “But Ash and I are going together.”

To that, Ronan said, “Fuck you.”

“Ronan,” Declan said, eyeing him with a look that said, _Now, you know better than that._

“Fine. Have fun listening to whatever shit you fuckers talk about in D.C,” he spat, before turning away. “I’m not subjecting myself to that kind of torture. Enjoy your kinks.”

Declan allowed himself a leisurely eye roll. "Forgive him." 

“Yeah, like that's ever going to happen,” Ashley promised, heels clicking as she made towards the Volvo.

Declan resisted the urge to run a hand through his curls and ruin his hair. He mumbled, “This is going to be a wonderful day.”

The best part was, though, he was only half-lying.

The walk at the park went about as well as expected: he avoided his parents and offered to go down a different path in the hopes of postponing the eventual lecture and whichever shed Niall Lynch was planning to make him clean out. Walking with his girlfriend and brother as company, however, was beginning to reveal its own set of challenges.

“Ronan, you need to dial it back,” Declan said gently. “Ash is staying with us until tomorrow morning so I expect you to be civil until then.”

“Oh, no. Of course, she can spend the night," Ronan said in a way that claimed that he did not approve of that at all. "I sleep with headphones on anyway." 

Declan didn't even try to scold his brother. He was never going to stop him from saying shit like that. Instead, he settled for rolling his eyes and wordlessly smacking him upside the head. 

“Touch me again,” he dared, “and we’re going to have the police swarming Henrietta Park.”

“Or,” Declan drawled, “we could just keep walking, maybe enjoy the warmer weather a little bit, pet a dog or two. You know, normal people activities?”

Ronan snickered as though disgusted.

Ashley then attempted to shift the conversation away from Ronan. “I’ve been looking forward to spending the day here with you,” she said, grinning up at him.

He grinned back and let his hand find hers.

“Sure you have,” Ronan murmured. “I’m sure you’re even more excited to be spending the night.”

“Ronan.” Declan smiled at him pleasantly. “It’s Sunday.”

“You’re the sinful one if your mind went anywhere with that.”

“Bro, relax, would you? She’s going to be staying in the guest room.”

“Yeah?” he asked, unimpressed. “For how long? Until everyone’s asleep?”

“Longer than Adam ever stayed in his guest room.”

Declan would be lying if he said he didn’t derive some pleasure from how Ronan flustered like a rabid animal.

“Everyone in the house is a deep sleeper except you and me. You think I can’t hear those stairs creaking at two in the morning?” He uncapped his sport’s bottle and said, before taking a sip, “But that’s none of my business.”

“Sinful,” Ashley clucked under her breath, just loud enough that she knew Ronan could hear.

Declan decided to walk in between them to be sure there would be no bloodshed. He put in his wireless earbuds, turned up the volume, and enjoyed a lovely spring day while ignoring whatever the people on either side of him were aggressively gesturing over. He only paused to pet a couple of Retrievers, smiling and pretending that his brother and girlfriend were just as happy as he was to be walking together on the beaten concrete path of sweet old Henrietta. 

Bringing Ash back to the Barns went about as well as expected, too: they were shocked—Declan never brought one of his girls to the Barns—but he felt blessed by their reactions. His mother fawned, his father had temporarily put aside their little quarrel to smile and give him a thumbs-up, Matthew wanted to show her everything and anything. Everyone, to Declan’s immense surprise and joy, acted astonishingly polite and cordial.

Well, almost everyone.

“Someone, quick, grab the salt!” Ronan screamed as he ran into the kitchen. “It’s a demon!”

Declan glared at him from over the rim of his coffee cup. 

It was only due to the absence of their parents, and their disapproval, and Matthew, and his innocence, that Ronan was revealing the worst of his sharp edges. It was due to the same reason that Ashley followed right behind him and shouted back, “Yeah, someone told me the devil was here.”

Declan crossed himself. “Come on, you guys. Really?”

He glanced between them as his brother and girlfriend stared each other down from across the kitchen island, considering.

“If she starts crawling on the walls, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Me? How many chickens do you sacrifice every morning?”

_“Guys.”_

It was only when Aurora entered the kitchen to prepare dinner was there a ceasefire. 

Declan recruited Matthew's help and tried to keep the two of them separated for as much of the evening as he could manage. They fist-bumped in private, Declan taking off to distract Ashley while Matthew handled their brother, but when dinner rolled around, they couldn't keep them out of the same room any longer. 

"I tried," Matthew whispered, lifting one of the dishes from the stovetop. 

Declan lifted the heavier one and sighed. “They’re still alive, aren’t they? I'd say that's a success.”

“Yeah, but for how long?”

He made a face. “Erm...”

“They can’t hate each other forever,” Matthew reasoned. “Not if you’re really serious about Katie.”

“Ashley, and you underestimate their ability to hold a grudge.” He glanced in the direction of the dining room. “You know how long it took for me and Ronan to get along...and Ashley still hasn’t forgiven Elizabeth S., third grade, Butterfly Troop, summer of 2007, for breaking her CD player and not apologizing.”

Matthew stared at him in deep concern. “But...what are they even mad at each other about?”

“Don’t know.” He motioned for his brother to follow him into the dining room. “Probably nothing.”

“Then shouldn’t they be fine then?”

“Mmm...Something tells me that’s not going to happen.”

Ashley and Ronan didn’t break eye contact from across the empty seat between them. They were prepared for a full evening of vocal sparring, their expressions sharpened and their words even sharper. They came with the full intent to see their opponent bleed, to laugh as they fell. They wanted the entire family to see the other’s demise at their hand.

Words could not describe how much they hated each other.

Then Declan walked into the room, setting a dish a bit too heavy for Matthew to carry down on the table. He looked blissful, content as he took the empty seat. He flashed his brother a smile, a clear _thank you_ , and then focused all of his attention on Ashley. He took her hand and squeezed it.

“I can't wait for you to try Mom's apple pie," he whispered. "She said it's okay if we have dessert first." 

Matthew walked behind their chairs and whispered between them, “Mom’s pies are the _best.”_

Declan nodded his agreement. To Ashley, he said, “Just wait until fall comes around and you get to try pumpkin."

“Oh my God.” Matthew plopped into his seat. “The holidays. Just wait until the holidays, We have, like, five different—”

Niall glanced at them. “Boys.”

They quieted.

“Gorgeous dinner as always, my love," Niall said, taking his seat beside his wife. He took her hand and then Matthew's. "Let us all give thanks." 

Ashley was already holding Declan’s hand, but she hesitated as Matthew held out his palm to her. She didn’t flick her gaze to Ronan, but Ronan knew she had her focus on him. She waited to see what he would say, as he waited to see what she would do. This was meant to be the beginning of the war.

His eyebrows lifted in surprise as she took Matthew’s hand.

As they all lowered their heads and listened to Niall’s prayer, two people at the table opened their eyes.

Ronan would pray for forgiveness later, and Ashley simply didn’t care. They looked past Declan, who sat between them, holding either one of their hands, having entirely submerged himself into the prayer.

They stared at each other, both of them witness to the other’s soundless sigh.

Words could not describe how much they loved Declan.

The fight hadn't left either of them, but for now, they had placed it aside. Keywords: for now. Undoubtedly there would still be a battle that night, only now it was a battle of who could bite their tongue the hardest without cutting it off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allow me to begin by saying that I absolutely love how so many of you have called them real!ronan and dream!ronan, it cracks me up every time! 
> 
> I love all of your comments and reviews so, so much. Sometimes you guys delve so deep into the story, creating your own theories and headcanons that I’m blown away. The way you guys notice some things that I didn’t even notice until I think about it and go, “Oh my gosh, you’re right,” never fails to entertain me XD I absolutely love every little bit of it and I want to thank you all so much for making me smile every time I have a new review to read! <3
> 
> This chapter ended up being more of a filler, but I hope you all still enjoyed it! We’ll be right back on track to Declan’s salvation or demise with the next chapter!
> 
> I still don’t know the total amount of chapters left, but I can say with confidence that we’re nearing the end!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	20. Nightmare Ronan

Ronan peeked open an eye. His face contorted at the sight.

Real Ronan was back.

It wasn’t that Ronan thought himself unreal. What even was real? Did it matter? Not to Ronan. _Real_ was an abstract concept, as plausible as numbers or letters but also just as tangible. It would never be something he needed to concern himself with.

If anything in the world was truly unreal, it was the Real Ronan.

He had the Real Ronan to thank for his own existence, not that he liked remembering it, but it was true. He could admit it was true. Without him, Declan would have never had brought him to life. He wouldn’t have had the foundation to wish for a little brother to love or, more accurately, to love him back.

That was it, though. The line of necessity ended there.

Real Ronan had given Declan everything he needed to create Ronan, and that was good and jolly and all, but he had served his purpose. He had been the blueprint for Ronan and now had no place among this world in Cabeswater. The blueprint could be crumpled up and trashed.

If only the blueprint would stop crawling out of the damn trashcan.

He did his best to ignore it. The only thing that mattered to Ronan in this world, in any, was Declan.

Undeterred Declan. His older brother. Stick-in-the-mud extraordinaire, non-magical in all his glory, expert on mundane shit like suits and how to use a printer, his best friend and partner in crime, his anchor, his rock, still nervously learning things about himself, like the knowledge that his favorite color was, in fact, purple.

His most recent achievement. 

“I’m not saying I’ve won tournaments at this,” Ronan had told him once while he scrutinized his brother's checker set, “but aren’t they supposed to be black and red?”

“Dad made them for me,” Declan said, as though that explained the oddness of it, which it did. Nothing their father made was ever not odd. “You can have the light ones and I’ll take the dark.”

Ronan had looked down at the set as he took a seat. “So why purple?”

Declan had paused then, as if only just then considering it. “It’s my favorite color," he decided.

Ronan seriously doubted that the Real Ronan knew that.

Declan sat on the rug beside him now, in the delicate process of creating a house of cards on the coffee table. Ronan had suggested it as a way for him to relieve some of the stress that took up so much of his thoughts, and since Declan always listened to him, he had been building it for the past hour. It had fallen over a lot in the beginning, but the current structure he was working on now had held together the longest. It was gradually getting to an impressive height.

Ronan didn’t trust him alone. When alone, Declan’s thoughts and worries went haywire, so Ronan had dozed off on the couch with his headphones on, blaring Celtic music. Sometimes, he would hold up a finger and act like he was going to touch the card house, seeing how long it took for Declan to start flailing and hissing.

Unbeknownst to his brother, the “real” Ronan continued to stand in the living room doorway. His interest flicked between the person on the couch and the person with the cards. His expression drastically changed depending on which one he focused on. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t venture any closer. He only watched.

Ronan couldn’t kill him. As much as he wanted to, as much as brainstormed for ways that would allow it, he couldn’t. He could never. It would end it all. It would end Cabeswater, end Ronan, end both of their Matthews, and in the devastation of it all it would end Declan.

Ronan sucked in a deep inhale through the nose. Declan had been telling him his secrets for the past several months now, carefully measuring them out as they built more and more trust. Ronan knew that if anything ever happened to the remaining members of his family, Declan would not be attending the funerals. He’d be too busy preparing his own.

He hadn’t realized how much his own face had begun contorting, unnaturally contorting, until Declan poked his shoulder.

“Bro?”

Real Ronan had never bothered with Declan before. So many times he had jumped through hoops just to avoid him. He would bare his teeth whenever he had been approached by him, would spit acid if he had crossed a certain threshold. His older brother could have moved to Alaska or Australia or Jupiter and he wouldn’t have batted an eye, but now, when everything was very nearly fucking _perfect,_ Real Ronan wanted to ruin everything.

“Ronan?”

He smoothed out his expression. “What’s up?” he asked Declan.

Declan blinked at him curiously, making Ronan grin despite his mood. His older brother stared at him as though wondering where Ronan’s previous expression has gone. He was certain Declan was now thinking he had just imagined it. 

“Nothing. I just wanted to ask what you thought.” He gestured to his house of cards. “How much taller do you think I can get it?”

Why would Ronan give his brother back into the hands of the world that had nearly broken him? Declan was still recovering, still had moments of panic and shaking, where he wiped tears from his eyes over and over while Ronan tried to calm him down. Every time that happened Ronan hated that world, the “real” world, and everything in it, and everyone in it. 

“Not high at all if I sneeze in a certain direction.”

Declan narrowed his eyes. “Don’t.”

They were to blame for Declan's fears, for his anxiety, for the fact that he still looked over his shoulder whenever they were out in public. They were to blame every time Declan had trouble breathing because little bits and pieces of terrible memories were trying to fight their way back into the front of his mind. 

Thank God Declan couldn’t dream in this world. Ronan was certain most of those dreams would have been nightmares, just like they had been in the real world.

Ronan narrowed his eyes on the Real Ronan—still fucking standing in that doorway—feeling one twitch. Now was a quiet, simple moment. No one else was home. He had his music and his older brother working on anxiety management beside him. Everything would, quite literally, be perfect if not for this one intrusion.

 _Why don’t you just leave him alone?_ he wanted to vent. _Can’t you see he’s happy here?_

Of course the Real Ronan could see that. He just didn’t care.

What was the point of taking Declan back there? So he could trudge through a miserable life until he inevitably died anyway? 

No, Real Ronan did not care about Declan at all.

Dying was the best thing Declan could do. Dying meant spending an eternity in a place where Declan would be loved. Living meant enduring years of fear all on his own. In Cabeswater, dying was living, but in the real world, living was hell.

Not that the Real Ronan cared about any of that either. He wanted his older brother back so he could, what? Feel relieved for a week or two and then drive Declan back to D.C., where he couldn’t bother Real Ronan anymore? 

He just couldn’t wrap his head around how he could have been blueprinted off of something so selfish. It pissed him off just thinking about it. No one cared if Declan lived or died in the that evil fucking world. Only Cabeswater cared. Only _Ronan_ cared. Why were all these goddamn _real_ people making this process so difficult for him? 

Sure, they could have a funeral for Declan, cry a little, say stupid shit like “If only this, if only that,” and by this time next year no one would remember Declan’s middle name.

Meanwhile, Declan’s spirit would thrive here. He would go on as though he was still living, and yet would never die. 

Ronan couldn’t wait for it, for summer, for eternity. He could barely endure the excitement, the anticipation. 

It would be the beginning of forever.

As soon as summer came, all of Declan's links to reality, to the "real" world, would be severed.

Permanently.

Time would slow. In fact, time wouldn’t even matter. Hundreds of thousands of years could pass by, and Declan would be at most in his early thirties. He could be married to some lovely lady (for the love of God, not Ashley), raising a family, waking up in the mornings to go to a job that actually made him smile, visiting Ronan on the weekends so they could take a break from it all to simply enjoy each other’s company.

Ronan could congratulate him on graduating college, could applaud his promotions. Declan could marvel at his dream creations, could help him expand the Barns. They could be the best man at each other’s weddings, could watch their kids play together when they met up for holidays and birthdays.

They would get into fights, there would scary times when a dream creation went wrong, but there would never be any risk of it ruining the paradise that Ronan had so carefully crafted for his brother. Life—or death, if you wanted to get specific—would be bliss.

He just had to hold out for a little bit longer.

It was draining work, to block all the real world infestations that kept trying to fight their way back into Ronan and Declan’s world. 

To block the sight of them from Declan, to block their words from reaching Declan's ears, to block their physical forms every time they tried to touch him. That would have been tiresome enough, but then they had started cracking out other means of reaching him. Now Ronan had to block out sensations from Declan's physical body, had to block out all those damn psychics from contacting his brother, block out every dream thing that the Real Ronan created.

Block, block, block. 

Ronan just wished he could kill them all and be done with it.

And there were so many ways he could kill them, too.

Next time they visited, he could whip out a gun and—

_blam, blam, blam_

—problem solved.

He could turn the floor they stood on to lava and howl at the irony.

He could manifest giant spiders to descend on them.

He could get creative and have their own dream versions, have the Gansey, the Blue, and the Adam he had created become rabid and unhinged and monstrous and devour them all.

In that scenario, he'd saved the Real Ronan for himself. He’d let him watch his friends die first, then Ronan would take him. He would let himself become his truest, most inhuman form and then he would tear him apart.

“What’s got you smiling?” Declan asked conversationally.

“Nothing,” Ronan whispered.

Nothing that could ever happen, unfortunately.

Ronan wasn’t pretending to be the Real Ronan. There was no impersonation involved. Ronan was called Ronan merely because that was the name Declan associated with his middle brother. What differentiated him from the _other_ person who shared his name, was that Declan was as much to him as he was to Declan. They orbited each other, unsure of which one was the sun and which was the planet, which one provided life and which provided light. Essentially, weren't those both the same thing? 

Ronan couldn’t live without Declan.

And Declan would not live without Ronan.

They only needed each other. Ronan just provided all the extras to make his brother happy, which in turn, also made him happy. Most of the time. He still hated Declan's choice of girlfriend. He feared that it was leading towards something more permanent. Ronan wouldn't be able to remove her if Declan decided that she was to be "the one" or some shit. He _could_ spin together a divorce somewhere down the line, but he _wouldn’t_ because he wasn’t going to put his brother through something like that, no matter how much he despised the girl. 

He couldn’t simply alter her either. Declan had fallen for the blonde that was created with all of those traits, so he was stuck with trying to make it work with a person literally designed to piss him off. 

“Do you always have to wear all black,” she would say, staring him down from the other end of the kitchen table, posed as though she were multitasking with insulting him and taking a photoshoot, “or do just not know how to match clothes? I could help you, you know, like, pick out clothes you can wear to other than to a funeral if you like.”

“Guys...” Declan would warn.

“No, thanks. I could get the same kind of help from the magazine section at Walmart, so.” Ronan would shrug.

 _"Guys..."_ Declan would warn again.

He needed to figure out some way to remove her from the picture in a way that made sense to Declan’s idea of reality and would only minimally upset him. He couldn’t simply have her die in some accident—no matter how much he fantasized about it. Declan had been through enough grieving in his life, even though Ronan didn’t consider his girlfriend someone worth the grieving.

His poor brother had such askew ideas of priorities, forcing himself to work a job he hated because he thought that was what he was supposed to do, and dating a girl he thought he thought he loved when Ronan could easily create someone so much better.

All he needed to do was kick out this _Ashley_ and then Ronan could have free range to spin together any person he wanted for his brother. He had already made plans. All he needed to do was get rid of _Ashley._

That’s what Ronan wanted to be working on right now. Not the fucker with his face, trying to weasel his way back into Declan’s life. He had made it quite clear that the door to Declan’s life had been thrown shut and locked and bolted, and it wasn’t going to be opening back up again, not for him. It might as well not even be a door anymore. It was just a wall now. A heavily barricaded wall. The “real” Ronan wasn’t getting back in, no matter how loudly he kept knocking. Declan was deaf to the knocking anyway, so all it really did was annoy the crap out of Ronan.

Ronan, Real Ronan, and Declan all turned their heads as a caw sounded from the kitchen. Chainsaw flew in a beat later and landed on the back of the couch.

“No!” Declan watched in despair as the drafts she brought in toppled his card house.

Ronan noticed that Chainsaw looked just as peeved over the visitor in the doorway as he was. Her normally immaculate feathers, which she preened meticulously throughout the day, looked mangled and ragged now as she turned around. Her nails were much longer than they should be, her beak much longer than it should be. Her eyes shouldn’t look like that. She made a low, unhappy noise as she opened her beak. 

Ronan spotted rows of teeth.

“Chainsaw,” he scolded. 

She snapped her beak shut. She squawked at him, and with that simple movement, her feathers returned to its original gloss. The teeth disappeared.

“Nah, it’s okay,” Declan said, misunderstanding as he pulled together the cards. “She didn’t mean it.”

Like Real Ronan, he trusted Chainsaw, _his_ Chainsaw, so much so that he granted her the privilege (or the curse) of knowing what they were made of: dreams, and what constantly stalked them: reality.

It helped, like an emotional support animal would help, to have another creature who understood his suffering. They could glare daggers and suppress the urge to attack Real Ronan together.

Chainsaw fluttered down to land on the coffee table, standing in the pile of cards. She picked up one and offered it to Declan. He beamed as he took it from her.

Declan's therapist had suggested the idea with cards. So far Ronan thought it was showing good results.

He had wanted to do joint therapy sessions with his brother, but Declan had insisted that he wanted to do it separately. Ronan knew it was because Declan hated it when anyone saw him upset, or less than perfect. He had agreed quite easily, much to Declan’s relief, as his older brother had been entirely concerned that Ronan would be offended that Declan didn’t want him coming along.

Ronan had thought it both humorous and sweet. Declan honestly believed that Ronan would have no idea what was being said behind those closed doors of the therapist's office. He had been trained to believe that everything he dreamed about was reality, and sometimes Ronan forgot that. 

His brother wouldn’t know that Ronan was connected to everything, that he could see inside the therapist’s head. He could hear what his brother was saying as he sat in the opposite chair, could see the expressions flickering on Declan’s face as he tried not to fidget with his cufflinks. He saw when his eyes would start to tear up, heard when his voice got a little quieter.

Everything the therapist said were words handpicked by Ronan. Ronan didn’t monitor everyone’s words so closely, because that would be exhausting. Most of the time he simply had algorithms set in place, especially for unimportant figures. Cashier at grocery store flirts with his brother, students at his brother’s university inflected their jealousy, the dog Declan stopped to pet is completely thrilled to sniff his hand, simple stuff. For figures like their father, mother, and Matthew, he had to put a lot more work into making them what he wanted. He was pretty fucking proud of himself for how they turned out. Then of course there was Adam. Ronan was particularly fond of that project.

“How would you feel,” Ronan had once said, “about more freckles. Specifically on the shoulders.”

Adam had looked at him strangely. “I’m not sure I would notice, why?”

“Do you think anyone else would notice?”

“Why is this something you’re thinking about?”

“Just humor me—Okay, what about your hair? Do you think it’ll just, curl up on its own? Naturally, I mean it. People’s hair does that sometimes, right?”

Adam just stared at him.

“Because I think it will.”

The only thing Ronan didn’t have access to was the inner workings of Declan’s mind, but that was quite alright. His brother would lay his heart, soul, and mind all out bare at his feet, all Ronan had to do was ask.

Declan was his.

Declan _knew_ he was his.

Everyone knew he was his, the issue was that some people were in denial of that, but those people weren’t Ronan’s problem. At least, they wouldn’t be soon.

All he had to do was tolerate them until the solstice, and then he and Declan would never have to deal with them again. The rest of their eternal futures would go unbothered.

With those thoughts in mind, he leveled his gaze on Real Ronan— _still fucking standing in that doorway_ —and grinned. Even though Declan sat right there, he allowed his face to shift just a bit, just enough that it passed the point of what a person should be capable of doing. He made sure Real Ronan watched as he reached out a hand and scruffed Declan’s hair, making his brother slap his hand away with a laugh and hardly stern, “Ronan, my hair!”

By the time Declan looked up, Ronan's face had returned to normal.

“Fuck, man.” He pulled his hand back, his smile matched with an expression of disgust. “How much shit did you put in your hair?”

“It’s called hair gel, Ronan, look it up.” Declan shoved his arm away and returned to his pile of cards. He tried getting the first few to stand, only for Chainsaw to walk across the coffee table and knock them over. He glared at her in exasperation.

“You—” He pointed a card at her. “—are making this exceedingly difficult.”

She plucked the card from him.

“Hey!”

With his brother distracted, Ronan flipped off his real counterpart, letting him know he could leave now. 

He didn't look away until Real Ronan had resided back into the hall and disappeared.

Hopefully forever.

One day, Ronan told himself. One day, he would, and that day was coming up soon.

He stretched his arms above his head and then folded them under his neck. He cranked up the Celtic music thrumming through his headphones. “Alright, I’m gonna sleep.”

Declan nodded as he restarted the base of his card house. “Sweet dreams."

Ronan smiled to himself. Declan may not have been able to dream, because he was already living in his own, but Ronan could.

Ronan could dream, and when he wasn’t dreaming of the next fantastic creation to show off to his older brother, he would dream of blood.

He would stare into a mirror, watching as it would seep from his reflection's throat. Eyes like his would dilate, pupils growing and growing until it took up all of the blue, and then all of the white. His pale skin would turn paler and paler until it matched the pasty substance of the paint they used on some of the sheds. Ronan would look down at himself and he would be fine, but when he looked up he would have rivulets of red running down his neck, his chest, his arms, drenching his clothes. 

Often by this point Ronan would have been laughing, right before his reflection sunk below the bottom of the mirror, leaving Ronan the only one left standing. Usually, his reflection left behind a bloody handprint or two on the glass. Sometimes Ronan would reach out a hand to touch it, and his fingertips would pull away stained red. It always tasted sweet on his tongue.

Ronan closed his eyes with a contented sigh and nodded off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN, MY FRIENDS.
> 
> I’ve had this chapter pulled together for a while now and was waiting for Chapter 20 to come around and THEN it ends up landing right on Halloween and just, the timing of it, I am so happy. Just, YESSSS.
> 
> The best part is that, way back in Chapter 1, I thought Dream Ronan here was a stagnic character. HAHAHAHAHA. 
> 
> I love surprises. <3
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading this story and for all of your reviews, I love each and every one! I wish you all a Happy Halloween!!!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit.


	21. Goodbye and Goodnight

_Monday, May 21_

_31 days until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

  
Ronan closed his eyes in the waking world.

He opened them in his dreams.

He opened them in Cabeswater.

The first thing he did was crack his neck hard to the right, then to the left. He knew what he was doing, and he was going to do it pissed.

He called, “Cabeswater.”

_Greywaren._

The trees' usually upbeat thrill was tempered by hesitance. It had not gone unnoticed how angry he had been with them lately. He could almost feel their expectancy for him to go through the same script he had been rehearsing since he had dragged Declan’s sleeping form to Fox Way:

_“Give me back my brother.”_

_“Wake him up.”_

_“I know you can fucking do it, so do it!”_

Every time, he was denied, apologetically. It made it worse when the trees tried to convince him with reassurances such as, _“Please, do not fret. Our dear and lovely Sacrifice is thriving!”_

This time, he demanded something else.

“Bring me my brother’s dream.”

He heard a whistle of wind and wondered if it was a simple breeze or the trees gasping. They rustled around him, excited and confused and full of wonder.

_You wish to meet our Sacrifice’s dream?_

His eyes burned with the memories, with messed-up laughter and sharpened teeth.

“Just bring him here.”

_Yes, yes._

_We can do that._

Whether from eagerness to finally be able to make their greywaren happy, or relief from the usual surliness, Ronan didn’t know. He counted himself lucky that he didn’t have to argue the point as he had come prepared for.

Taking a breath, he trudged forward into his forest.

The trees of his forest gave way up ahead. Through the shrubs and branches, he spotted a long expanse of yellow grass, not unlike the grass of the fields they had found Declan's neglected car in.

He hadn’t entirely exited the forest, still stepping over large bushes, when he spotted him. When he spotted it.

He saw it, standing in the muted field with thunderclouds rolling in turmoil overhead. It had its back turned to him, glancing left and right in confusion.

Ronan marched right up to it.

“Hey, asshole. _Surprise."_

The thing turned around just in time for Ronan to land a punch.

A smile broke across Ronan’s face as he felt actual contact.

Blood splurted from its nose as the doppelgänger’s back hit the ground. Ronan thrilled as the creature’s face scrunched up in pain. So it could feel it.

It made a noise of distaste as Ronan grabbed it by the throat and pulled it back up.

“You think I’m—”

Ronan had an entire speech planned out and he didn’t even get to start it. The creature’s knuckles had whipped up into his mouth and nose. Ronan didn’t let go but stumbled back as hot pain flashed up his own face. The bottom row of his teeth cut through his lips and he tasted iron spilling onto his tongue.

_“Fuck.”_

The pain shifted to his gut as a swift kick sent him rolling into the grass.

“Is this your plan? You wanna start a fight club?” It threw back its head and laughed, walking in a circle as though following the laughter. “I can do this every night. Come on. Let’s have a little fun till that solstice gets here.”

Ronan spat before standing. “Declan won’t have anything left over once I’m done with you.”

The thing lost its smile. “Because that would make him so fucking happy, wouldn’t it?” It leaned in, lips curling, "His little brother finally loves and appreciates him, and then what happens? He finds him bloodied and bruised. Nice."

The thing was fast—too fast, to the point Ronan wondered if he had a setting that he was capable of ramping up. Lights flashed across one of his eyes as a sudden elbow rammed into his cheek. He stumbled sideways and caught himself.

“You’re selfish, Ronan Lynch.”

“And you’re a fucking monster!”

“Declan doesn’t think that.”

Lights still blinking across one eye’s field of vision, Ronan looked up, and in one decision leapt and tackled the creature to the grass. He nailed him with a fist to the face, twice, three times, again and again before he could catch his breath.

The doppelgänger headbutted him— _fuck_ —and Ronan fell. The thing grabbed the front of his chest, pulled him close, and smashed its own fist into his nose. Ronan felt something _pop._

He waited for the next retaliation, scrambling to his feet so he could start swinging again. The doppelgänger stood as well but didn't move. A confused expression had befallen it and a second later Ronan realized why.

Hesitantly, they both turned their heads to the sound of crying.

The thing spat a wad of spit and blood into the grass and said, “What the hell?”

Side-eyeing the thing, Ronan kept his distance and walked towards the sound. Not far from where they had been grappling in the grass, their clothes (matching clothes, because the world apparently wanted Ronan to suffer) streaked in mud and bits of grass clippings now, they found two other lookalikes. Blond, blue-eyed, and familiar.

“Matthew?” They both asked in the same startled and untrusting tone. The doppelgänger shot Ronan a look that said if they spoke in unison again, he’d gut him.

One Matthew kneeled in the grass while the other stood solemnly beside him with a hand on his shoulder, mirror twins in matching jeans and sweatshirts and shoes. Damp blond hair obscured both their faces as they hung their heads.

“Matthew?” Ronan tried asking again.

The doppelgänger waved a hand at them and demanded of Ronan, “What is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

The thing sounded stricken, but what upset Ronan was that it also sounded a tad panicked.

“The fuck you mean, you don’t know? Didn’t you summon us here?”

The way it said “summon” made Ronan picture it as a demon, an accurate image. “Well...yeah.”

“Then tell me what the fuck this is.”

“He's gone," the two blonds said, same voice, same inflection in the words, two overlapping recordings playing at the same time. "He's gone."

Neither Ronan had to ask whom they were speaking of.

“It's too late.” The Matthews raised their heads. Tears tracked down their cheeks, mingling with the rain. “It's too late."

The doppelgänger whipped around to stare Ronan down with a glare meant to burn. “Wake us up. Both of us, right now.”

“The fuck makes you think I know how to do that?”

Ronan jumped away as the doppelgänger's eyes caught fire. Not metaphorically, though Ronan wished, as flames filled his lookalike's sockets.

“You absolute _useless—“_

“You didn’t love him enough.”

The doppelgänger flinched and the flames went out. They turned to whichever Matthew had spoken.

The young boys’ gazes were broken with tears and anguish, but through it, they both managed a glare.

“You didn’t love him enough,” the other Matthew repeated.

Then the first one said, “This is your fault.”

“This isn't real," the doppelgänger said, to itself, it seemed. "Matthew would never say shit like that."

Every burning nerve Ronan had yelled at him to get the hell out of there. Only the fight option kicked in for Ronan when flight or fight presented itself, but there was nothing to fight.

Ronan looked to where the two versions of his little brother were hovering. A section of the tall grass in front of them clumped together, the rain having plastered it to something. “What are you two looking at?”

“You expecting them to give you a viable answer?” the doppelgänger hissed, then hissed again as Ronan walked towards them. “Well, don’t go near them!”

Ronan only didn’t listen to his lookalike out of principal, but he nearly wished he had. He marched over, taking a second to steel himself and remember that whatever he saw, it wasn’t real. He parted the grass.

_Here lies Declan T. Lynch_   
_1998 - 2018_

Ronan couldn’t tell which one of them made a choked noise, they both had the same voice.

The stone was small, half the height that Ronan thought it should be, but intricately designed, with an angel carved on either side. His brother's favorite excerpt was written below his name. Dying vines covered the stone everywhere except for where it would obstruct the words and art, dark purple flowers either attached or lying withered in the grass below.

He reached out a hand to run his fingers over the name but stopped. Behind him, he heard the doppelgänger let out a strangled, _“Christ.”_

He turned to watch as his lookalike quickly scurried back, eyes locked on the ground in front of it.

When Ronan looked down to see what he was staring at, he saw that the grass directly around him had vanished. Beneath him, dark soil muddied his shoes. He looked around to see that the grass had been cleared in a large, rectangular shape that he now stood in.

He made a similar noise that his doppelgänger had and jumped back into the grass and off of the grave.

For a silent moment, the two of them merely stared at it.

“Why are you doing this?”

Ronan looked up at the sound of his own wavering voice, coming from his lookalike.

The creature refused to look at him. “Why can’t you just fuck off and leave us alone?”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Ronan fought back his own wavering voice with a stick made of spite and fury. “For him to die?”

“This? This is what would happen in _your_ world. All you people eventually die in your world.” It gazed down at the soil.

“This will still happen if he stays in your world,” Ronan told him. “This is his end if he stays with you.”

“Maybe for his body,” the thing sneered, but with much less venom. The grave seemed to be leeching the hatred out of the thing, out of Ronan, leaving them both hollow. “But his spirit will live on with me.”

“I’d rather him die than stay with you,” Ronan said, voice low.

The thing’s hands clenched into fists. “That’s because you’re _selfish.”_

“I’m not the one trying to kill him.”

“I’m doing this because this is what it’ll take to make him happy.” It then spat into the grass and asked him, “What’s your excuse?”

The doppelgänger did a double-take at the headstone then. By its expression, there would be nothing good there.

Reluctantly, Ronan followed its gaze.

Words appeared on the stone that Ronan knew weren’t there before.

_Superbus filius et fratris_   
_Ut ipse invenire felicitas_   
_Tandem_

They were in Latin, but he wished he couldn’t understand it.

_A proud son and beloved brother_   
_May he find happiness_   
_Eventually_

He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, breathing in. He opened them.

The words were different now.

_Non somnum, sed eius fratrem_   
_Mortem_

_Not sleep, but his brother_   
_Death_

Ronan decided to stop looking.

The Matthews walked over delicately. At some point, they had gathered handfuls of purple flowers, or perhaps they had been clutching them the whole time. They placed the flowers in front of the headstone now.

“His spirit will be lost,” one Matthew said.

“His body will die,” said the other.

They both turned to Ronan and the doppelgänger, eyes hollowed out with grief.

“Say your goodbyes.”

The doppelgänger looked to be attempting to crush its own skull. “I’ll never fucking recover from this,” it muttered. It squeezed its eyes shut and turned to walk away.

Ronan felt tempted to do the same, but couldn’t bring himself to leave the gravestone. He felt tethered to it, rereading his brother’s name over and over.

So many memories were tied to that name, bad ones. He would have to dig just to pull out the few that didn’t leave him sitting in regret.

_“Ronan, for fuck’s sake. Can we have a serious conversation for once?”_

_“I_ know _you think you’re a punk, but you aren’t nearly as badass as you think you are.”_

_“You’re such a piece of shit, Ronan. If Dad saw—”_

Even now, he didn’t believe Declan had been right. The throes of sorrow and panic didn’t change his mind on that. Declan had been wrong, so many times. Wrong about Ronan, wrong about what to do, what he did, what he said.

But so had Ronan.

_“Are we having a conversation? Is that what’s happening right now?”_

_“You've got quite the guy here, Ashley. You'll have a great night with him and then some other girl can have a great night with him tomorrow."_

_“I’ll never forgive you.”_

This wasn’t right. None of it was. They had been young and stupid and full of pain. Declan had been closed off. Ronan had been full of spikes. Matthew had been the only safe ground between them. Without him, any semblance of a bond would have been severed years ago.

No. That wasn’t true, Ronan quickly realized. Declan would never leave him.

He couldn’t allow this to be the end of the line for both of them, for their lives together to end here. He wouldn’t stand for it.

“You need to wake up,” he said to the stone. “I can’t...”

He couldn’t apologize if he was sleeping.

Or dead.

“Say your goodbyes.” The Matthews had fallen back into mourning, heads hung again. “Say your goodbyes.”

“Both of you,” Ronan snapped, “This isn’t the real him. Knock it off.”

Well, he mused, these weren’t the real Matthews either, so maybe his point had been null and void.

A sharp, clawing hand snatched the back of his shirt. He jumped, knowing it was the doppelgänger and prepared to punch it, but faltered at the look on its face. He followed the doppelgänger’s eyes to what he was staring at and wished he hadn’t.

His lookalike must have either noticed or stepped on the hand that lied partially hidden in the grass, palm up, fingers frozen in bent positions. Ronan shouldn’t have, neither Ronan should have, but their lines of sight traveled up the arm attached to the hand, seeing the sleeves of a wet and ruined suit they recognized. Dark curls sprawled out in the grass, face as gray as the clouds the eyes stared up at. Dead eyes, the Lynch blue irises dulled and unblinking.

“Goodbye,” The Matthews bid despondently, at the same time the Ronans started screaming.

* * *

  
“Woah, woah! Deep breaths, deep breaths.” Declan dropped the laundry basket and ran to the bed. He pulled the rest of the covers back and pulled Ronan to him. His brother was way too pale, no matter how Irish he was. “Deep breaths. You’re okay now, you’re awake.”

His brother heaved as though sick while Declan tore away the blankets getting in his way and unceremoniously kicked them to the floor. He pulled his brother’s head to his chest and hugged him.

“It was just a nightmare.” He rubbed his arms up and down repeatedly, trying to rub away the feel of whatever nightmare his brother had just endured. “It wasn’t real, okay? This is real, right now is real.”

“What even is real,” his brother said shakily.

Declan wasn’t deterred and confidently said, “Who cares? Real is for other people.”

He hugged him tighter, relieved when his brother relaxed against him. He always knew what to say. Ronan exhaled and hugged him back tightly.

“But you’re here, and I’m here, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!!!
> 
> I’m sorry this took so long! I've been sick all through the holidays and I've dearly missed returning to this story. I'm quite a bit upset since I had planned for the story to be nearly finished by now before this delay happened, but! Did you see the shiny new chapter count at the top? The finale is rolling in!
> 
> The chapter count is subject to change but I do believe this is the right amount left, maybe give or take a chapter!
> 
> I hope you all had a splendid holiday season and that’ll you have a very happy New Year! <3
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


	22. The Small Hours

  
_June 20_

_5 hours and 24 minutes until the Summer Solstice_

* * *

Panic had become a palpable thing at 300 Fox Way.

Three days ago, they had set a digital clock on the mantel in the living room and set it for 72 hours.

It had done nothing good for their heart rates, but they had all dubbed it necessary.

“I don’t want to say this.” Gansey rose from the little nest he had created in a corner of the couch, crafted from books and papers and pillows. He took off his glasses to rub his face. “I truly don’t, but this is our last run. I know we’ve put everything we got into every try, but this—“

He let out a breath and continued rubbing his face, not finishing. He didn’t need to. They all knew what he meant.

They knew if they failed this time, there were no more chances.

Only Adam was brave enough to glance at the clock again.

_5 hours and 23 minutes_

His gaze then slid to the hallway, to where the room Declan had been sleeping in for the past two months lied. When they had set the countdown, they had started meeting up in that room, but they had quickly transferred their place of conduct to the living room.

The smaller the numbers on the clock became, the more painful it was to be near Declan’s sleeping form.

Somehow, Declan hadn’t…

Adam hated to think it, but somehow Declan hadn't deteriorated since he had fallen into his coma-like state. No one voiced it, for obvious reasons, but Adam had been checking him over closely. Ronan did too, but whereas Adam could tell Ronan did it out of the fear that he would find Declan beginning to decline, Adam did it to figure out how on earth Declan hadn’t begun to decline.

It wasn’t the most shocking discovery Adam had ever seen. Not long ago they had been on the hunt for another sleeping person, one who had been asleep for centuries, with the full intent of waking that person and asking for a wish.

No, this was not the most shocking discovery. It wasn’t even in the top five, but Adam was still curious.

Declan's skin still had a healthy glow, his hair was was still as soft and as curled as it had been when he had slit his arm and collapsed to the forest floor. The only difference was that Ronan had brushed out the leaves and grass clippings that had gotten caught, had scrubbed away the dried blood on his arm, leaving behind a clean, almost pretty line all the way down to his wrist.

The only conclusion he could come to was that Cabeswater was keeping him alive, like a giant IV that pumped him full of life. It made Adam wonder what would happen when Cabeswater severed that connection to his body.

No one, aside from the Fox Way psychics checking in on him, had taken a look at Declan since yesterday. Adam knew because he had been the last one in that room.

“Have you heard back from anyone else?” Adam decided to ask.

He hadn’t been expecting a good answer, and sure enough, Gansey said, “Nothing we’ve already tried.”

That surprised no one. Gansey had many connections to experts in the field of stranger things, but they all had doubted anyone would have a viable answer for their situation. If it wasn't a curse, a legend, or a prophecy, or perhaps even some sort of medical condition, most of his contacts had nothing to offer.

A few had experience with sacrifices, all of which had circled back to what they already knew:

Only the sacrifice could make the final decision.

With a heavy sigh, fully aware that she was picking up a spatula to scrape the bottom of the barrel, Blue asked, “What if we just talked to him?”

Gansey asked, “To whom?” and then he realized and quickly held up his hand and said, “No.”

Adam didn’t think a simple “no” would suffice, so he added, “That is a horrible idea, Blue.”

“That is the _only_ idea,” she fought back. “And I don’t mean threatening or bargaining or anything like that. I mean, just...talking. Maybe he’ll be willing to give him back once we explain everything.”

“At what point,” Adam demanded, “did that thing look willing to reason?”

In the few seconds that filled the room, they all shared the same flashbacks.

_“Dance, motherfuckers, dance!”_

The doppelgänger had laughed until it dropped to its knees, howling as the dirt beneath their feet turned to lethal pop rocks that exploded when touched.

They had learned quite quickly that the creature couldn’t kill them—Cabeswater would never allow it, both due to its creator, Ronan, and its sacrifice, Declan.

However, Cabeswater seemed to have no qualms about letting Blue’s dress catch on fire; about flipping Ronan into a lake as cold as winter and only letting him out once the risk of hypothermia began to set in; about a book with teeth chasing Gansey all the way back to the fields outside the forest; or all the traumatizing hallucinations the doppelgänger liked to play on them.

That seemed to be the creature’s favorite. Although he wouldn’t admit it, Ronan was still deeply upset over the time his lookalike had grabbed its fake version of Chainsaw and snapped her neck back with its teeth. They had all watched as the Chainsaw had horrifically cracked her bones back into place and then proceeded to scream and charge them.

“You really think it’d be up for a chat?” Adam continued. He didn’t think they could get close enough to even begin anything similar to a conversation before the creature did something to them.

Blue puffed up like an angry chipmunk and put her hands on her hips. “Well, then maybe _you_ should go talk to him.”

Adam turned to look at the wall, frowning. Although Blue didn’t, Gansey gave his friend the benefit of pretending not to notice how the tip of his ears went pink.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that the doppelgänger never had much interest in harming Adam.

“I’m just saying it’d be nice,” the doppelgänger had once told him, popping open the top of a tumbler and taking of swing of what could have quite possibly been something alcoholic. It had been some two weeks ago, during another unsuccessful attempt to wake Declan. They had stopped keeping track of the growing number in the middle of June.

The creature leaned against the tree that Adam had been tied to, watching while all the other trees attempted to crush Ronan, Gansey, and Blue beneath their branches.

“Just look how happy Declan is,” the doppelgänger had said, using the hand holding the tumbler to point a finger. Nearby, Declan had been taking a phonecall, unable to see or hear any of the mayhem happening—literally—fifteen or so feet away from him.

“What? No,” Declan snapped into his cell. “I never said casual attire would be appropriate. What part of a funding arrangement made you think casual? Get that fixed right now. No, I don’t care how long it takes—”

The doppelgänger leaned against Adam with a smile. “That could be you.”

Adam simply stated, “I have a boyfriend.”

He watched as the creature sputtered angrily.

“I am _literally_ the same person, except better.” It closed the top of the tumbler with an angry snap to show Adam how unhappy that comment had made it. “He’s an Audi, I'm the Audi _Deluxe,_ with seat warmers and shit.”

Adam narrowed his eyes and said, “I thought _you_ had a boyfriend.”

It waved him off. “Easy, easy. I make that Adam into someone else and then that spot is opened up for you.”

The creature was childish, needy, loud, terrible at making a good point. It was exactly like Ronan.

But it wasn’t Ronan. Ronan was over there, yelling obscenities up at trees as they tried to crush him like he was in a giant game of whack-a-mole.

“Look, you used to be a sacrifice to Cabeswater, just like _him.”_

The doppelgänger looked over at Declan Lynch fondly while Adam looked over and cringed. He hated being compared to the eldest of the Lynches. They were nothing alike.

“If you just did your damn research,” Declan ranted along his phonecall, walking in frustrated circles, “we wouldn’t be in this situation. I wouldn’t be here, fixing up your mess. Where is Stephanie? Get her on the phone—No, I’m done talking to you. Get me Stephanie.”

Adam gritted his teeth.

They were almost nothing alike.

“It would be so easy for you to just slip in here with us. It’d be like nothing ever changed, except you _and_ Declan would be happier. Fucking win/win.” the doppelgänger continued. Adam could see the creature fighting the blush that was spreading across the bridge of its nose. “Just...think about it.”

Adam gathered it must have been awfully distracted because one of the branches that went flying didn't go right through Declan as all the others had before it. Instead, it smacked him across the forehead.

_“Motherfucker!”_

Adam and the fake Ronan cringed as Declan dropped the phone and hit the grass on his back.

_“What the fuck was that!?”_

“He sounds upset,” Adam had commented.

“For the love of Christ,” the doppelgänger muttered, which Adam found a peculiar thing, wondering if the doppelgänger actually did believe in Christ or if it was all just an act. “All I want is to hang with my brother and my boyfriend without all this shit happening. Why is that too much to ask for?” It turned to Adam. “Am I being unreasonable here?”

“I’m not your boyfriend.”

The doppelgänger grinned. “Not yet, Parrish.”

It had been at that moment that one of the trees had thrown Ronan into that lake.

Adam panicked. “Is that ice?”

Indeed, there had been a thin sheen of ice over the water, aside from the hole that Ronan had cracked through. None of that made sense, considering that Adam was wearing a t-shirt and felt fine, but this was Cabeswater. Nothing had to make sense.

He turned to the doppelgänger. “He could die in there!”

“Eh.” The thing shrugged, more interesting in swishing around the last bit of its drink at the bottom of its tumbler. It squinted to see the liquid at the bottom. “On average, people can survive frigid water for ten to twenty minutes.”

“On _average.”_

The thing pointed its tumbler at him. “You’re _right._ Let’s shoot for twenty-one.”

Back to the present, Adam recalled all these memories and then said to Blue, “I don’t know if that would be such a good idea.”

“You don’t think you could do it?” Gansey asked him.

“I just...I just don’t think it’d be a good idea.”

“Well, we’re running out of any ideas.” Blue pressed her back against the wall and sunk down it. “Now’s the time for desperate measures.”

“We’ve been using desperate measures since the beginning,” Adam argued.

“More desperate then.”

They had tried everything they could think of.

Dream creation? The doppelgänger had crushed every single one.

Psychic intervention? Adam had earned three more wounds to go along with the one on the side of his neck.

Distraction technique? As soon as the doppelgänger had caught on, it had enveloped Declan in a black cloud. Of course, Declan couldn’t see or feel the cloud, but it poisoned and burned anyone else who came into it. They had been left coughing for days after that.

Talking to Cabeswater? Never proved fruitful: _Oh, no! We must keep our promise with our dearly beloved Sacrifice!_

Splitting up? The doppelgänger had split up too—creating five different versions of itself, one for each of them, and one to play air hockey with Declan.

“It’s invincible,” Blue muttered. “It’s like an all-seeing god. It knows the second we enter there, it knows whenever we’re trying something here.”

“It has limitations,” Gansey reminded her. “It can’t leave Cabeswater.”

“That doesn’t help much when neither can Declan,” Adam pointed out.

Gansey went quiet then. He looked around.

It was then that Blue and Adam looked at each other, realizing that there was something wrong with the picture they were in.

Gansey asked them, “Where’s Ronan?”

* * *

  
“Alright, everybody, alright!” Matthew proclaimed in his best announcer’s voice. Naturally, that spot was reserved for Declan, but seeing as he had mouth guards in and fists wrapped in cloth, the honor had gone to the youngest of the Lynches. “I want a good, clean fight. No biting, no cheap shots, no anything that would make the Lord above unhappy.”

Declan and Ronan rolled their eyes but didn’t say anything. Well, they couldn’t with their mouth guards. Their mother had made them wear them, and since Declan liked his perfect teeth, he didn’t complain as much as his brother had.

“First one to tap out—”

The brothers locked eyes. Death would happen before any tapping would occur.

“—or hold down their opponent for...How many seconds?”

Both boys held up ten fingers.

Matthew counted. “Twenty seconds!”

The other two restrained themselves from any sighing or facepalming out of the mutual love they held for their little brother. Twenty seconds it was then.

“Whoever does that, wins! On your mark...”

Long story short, their mother had made butter cookies, and there had only been one left on the plate in the kitchen.

“Get set...”

Neither had yet to realize that Matthew had already eaten it.

“Ding ding!”

Matthew didn’t know why they were fighting, but he sure was looking forward to a good match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I know this chapter was a little quick, but I hope you all still enjoyed it. We're now officially in the last sprint of the story! It's been tough these past few weeks to make time to write. I had planned out for the finale to happen around the one-year anniversary of this story, which I can't believe it's been over a whole year now! The chapters just seemed to zip by, and I've had such a blast on this journey.
> 
> I also feel so much better too, knowing there are other fans of TRC out there who love Declan as I do. This story has been closure for me after finishing that series and wishing those two had had a better relationship. I still have my hopes up for The Dreamer Trilogy!
> 
> They need to hug!!! I really hope they hug it out at least at one point in the series, please.
> 
> I hope the New Year has been treating everyone well and that you’ll all stick around for the ending!
> 
> With Love, Miss Lit


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